Imaging Pilgrimage: Art as Embodied Experience 9781501335013, 9781501335044, 9781501335037

Citation preview

Imaging Pilgrimage

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Praise for Imaging Pilgrimage “Imaging Pilgrimage is a vivid and vital evocation of the visual cultures of contemporary pilgrimage – the place of pilgrim frame of mind in current art production and the ways contemporary art itself enables and develops the pilgrimage process in the modern world. Deeply embedded in a rich historical understanding of Christian pilgrimage across the centuries, Kathryn Barush’s book throws light on the ways the arts across a vast geographic span in today’s world have built models of spiritual identity in resistance to the forces of secularism and the virtualities of the digital age.” Jaś Elsner, Senior Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, UK “Kathryn Barush takes us on a fascinating journey that explores the rich connectivity between people, places, images and song. A major contribution to our understanding of pilgrimage past and present.” John Eade, Professor of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Roehampton, UK “Bringing together arts of the built environment, portable shadowboxes, songs and sounds, and site-specific installations, Imaging Pilgrimage puts contemporary art that enacts and translates pilgrimage in dialogue with the deep, embodied histories of pilgrimage. Barush emphasizes the sensorial work of pilgrimage and the work of objects to build communitas-through-culture across space, time, and difference and her work is an important contribution to critical reception studies. Barush’s analysis of localized pilgrimage practices and objects connecting pilgrims to faraway places on ecocritical grounds takes on even deeper resonance amidst the Covid-19 pandemic in which Imaging Pilgrimage emerges and points the reader towards the entanglement of these global ecological and epidemiological crises. In addition to its scholarly exploration of pilgrimage and contemporary art, perhaps Imaging Pilgrimage also offers itself to readers as an object of communitas-through-culture, one that moves us towards being, feeling, and knowing together.” Jennifer Stager, Assistant Professor of History of Art, Johns Hopkins University, USA

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“This is a seductive book, deeply engaging to read and to think with. Kathryn Barush crosses landscapes, temporalities, and disciplines to extend our understandings of both pilgrimage and experiences of art. Her scope is wide, but her scholarship is profound.” Simon Coleman, Chancellor Jackman Professor, Department of Religion,University of Toronto, Canada “This brilliant book brings the ancient ‘kinetic ritual’ of pilgrimage out of the pages of history and into the context of the contemporary continuity of this ancient sacred art form. The art of pilgrimage has been embodied in the decorative badges, souvenirs, relics, pilgrim ampullae, the well-worn rosaries that accompanied pilgrims, and visible in the influence pilgrimage had on architecture, statuary, and fine art. In Barush’s fine retelling of the past and present of this global praxis, we are taken on a journey through the Pacific Northwest to Ecuador and are able to perceive, through the pilgrims’ eyes, Santiago de Compostela, Jerusalem, and Rome. Beyond the physical journey is the imagined journey of the ‘manuscripts, maps, and labyrinths as sites of mental, or stationary pilgrimage’: the pilgrim’s experience is literally brought home for others to experience. This fine work is groundbreaking in its interdisciplinary scope and will be important not only to Pilgrimage Studies, but also to Art History, Ritual Studies, Visual & Material Culture Studies, Comparative Religion, and Contemplative Studies.” Rita D. Sherma, Director & Associate Professor, GTU Center for Dharma Studies and Co-Chair, Sustainability 360, Graduate Theological Union, USA

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Imaging Pilgrimage Art as Embodied Experience Kathryn R. Barush

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BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Paperback edition published 2023 Copyright © Kathryn R. Barush, 2023 Kathryn R. Barush has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p.xi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Toby Way Cover image: Travels with Jack (reimagined), 2021 © Gisela Insuaste All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN:

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978-1-5013-3501-3 979-8-7651-0328-9 978-1-5013-3503-7 978-1-5013-3502-0

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Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Pilgrimage as Art, Art as Pilgrimage 1 Vashon Island → Spain: A Backyard Camino 2 South Africa → Lourdes: Souvenirs as Sites 3 England → Jerusalem: Rewilding Through Pilgrimage Song and Chant 4 Oakland → Ecuador: Haciendo marcas otra vez—Making Marks, Again 5 Los Altos → Everywhere: “The End Is Where We Start From” Toward a Conclusion: “As Far as the Eye Can Travel” Bibliography Index

viii xi 1 17 57 107 157 201 229 239 253

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Illustrations Plates 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

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Volker’s backyard Camino circuit start and endpoint Tomb of Fr. Nelson H. Baker, VG in the Lourdes grotto reconstruction, Our Lady of Victory National Shrine and Basilica Film still: Sequence of Volker walking through backyard into Spain (2016) Hettienne Grobler, Art Novena for Our Lady of Lourdes (2013) Hettienne Grobler, IV Roses, XXI Heaven on Earth, Mysteries of Mary tarot series (2016) Hettienne Grobler, III Vessels, VII Vessels, Mysteries of Mary tarot series (2016) Hettienne Grobler, Handmaiden of Roses, III Holy Rood, Mysteries of Mary tarot series (2016) William Parsons, Kitty Rice, James Keay, and Guy Hayward while on the “Jerusalem” pilgrimage (October 2016) William Blake, frontispiece, Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion, (1821) and Pilgrim inside the Tower of St. Michael, (2012) Gisela Insuaste, Haciendo marcas otra vez—Making Marks, Again (2014) (view from front of bus) Gisela Insuaste, Haciendo marcas otra vez—Making Marks, Again (2014) (altarcito on dash) Gisela Insuaste, Mapeando (2015) Gisela Insuaste, offerings left on 14th St. pilgrimage walking talking seeing being: love, labor and faith on 14th St (Vacuum Story Pt 1) (2012) Chiara Ambrosio, (a) “Napoli 18,” (b) “Palermo Dialogues,” As Far As the Eye Can Travel (2018, 2017) Chiara Ambrosio, “Justo Botanica” (2016)

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Figures I.1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8

The Virgin and Child, Flemish Book of Hours, Use of Rome (c. 1490) Phil Volker, Map of Backyard Camino (c. 2013) Sr. Joyce Cox, BVM and Phil Volker on the backyard Camino The Volker family sharing tapas at the picnic table (2016) Box containing stones and soil from sites associated with Jesus Christ Backyard Camino passport Phil’s Camino film poster (2016) Vashon Island Cinema marquee for Apocalypse Now (1979) and Phil’s Camino (2016) Phil Volker, Drawing of pilgrim and other sketches (c. 2013) Film still: Volker’s Camino map overlaid on aerial shot of backyard (2016) Lourdes grotto at night (c. 2013) Joseph-Hugues Fabisch, Our Lady of Lourdes (1864) Souvenir bottle of Lourdes water and cup given to pilgrims for drinking the water at Lourdes Part of a black veil and certification that it had “been worn by the Sacred Statue of Loreto” (1769) St. Lucy prayer card and “contact” relic with certification Hettienne Grobler, Mysteries of Mary cards (2016) “Ārati on the Yamuna” (The offering of lamps on the replica of the sacred Yamuna river) William Parsons and Guy Hayward (founders of British Pilgrimage Trust), outside William Blake’s cottage in Felpham (October 2016) Picketer protesting a pilgrimage at St. Winefride’s Well, Wales (June 2012) “Staff meeting” William Blake, “And did those feet . . .” (early nineteenth century) Joseph of Arimathea crossing the sea to Britain (early fourteenth century) William Blake, Joseph of Arimathea Preaching to the Britons (c. 1794/6) Windsor-Clive, drawings created in real-time along the “Jerusalem” pilgrimage (2016) Windsor-Clive, “And did those feet in ancient time” spiral (2016)

3 18 19 31 32 34 37 39 46 46 59 62 64 75 75 78 90 109 112 119 121 125 130 136 137

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3.9 Crucifixion, gilt bronze, Ireland (early seventh century) 3.10 Kitty Rice, Untitled (2016) 3.11 William Blake, Virgin and Child, Tempera on panel, Yale Center for British Art (1825) 4.1 Cheap Art Gallery/Bus, Bread & Puppet, Vermont 4.2 Peter Schumann, “the WHY CHEAP ART? Manifesto” (1984) 4.3 Xbus parked in San Leandro, CA, pre-installation 4.4 Gisela Insuaste, Haciendo marcas otra vez—Making Marks, Again (2014) (view from back of bus) 4.5 Gisela Insuaste, Arroyo boots (2019) 4.6 Gisela Insuaste, Travels with Jack (2002) 4.7 Apple Shrine, reinvention of the environment by Allan Kaprow (1992) 4.8 Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Agua Santa 4.9 Gisela Insuaste, walking talking seeing being: love, labor and faith on 14th St (Vacuum Story Pt 1) (2012) [Still] 4.10 Gisela Insuaste, Offerings to la Pachamama (2004) 4.11 Gisela Insuaste, portal de lana y madera (2014–17) 5.1 Labyrinth at the Jesuit Retreat Center of Los Altos, with olive tree in center circle 5.2 Plaque posted at the site of the Los Altos labyrinth 5.3 Group walking the c. thirteenth-century pavement labyrinth at Notre-Dame des Chartres, France 5.4 The Situs Hierusalem (c. ad 1100) 5.5 Boston College Memorial Labyrinth, Boston, MA 5.6 Turf labyrinth at Manresa Jesuit Centre of Spirituality, Dublin, Ireland

138 141 142 158 159 160 162 164 164 173 175 180 186 188 202 202 207 208 220 221

Acknowledgments I remarked recently to a student that my fieldwork has become more fun ever since it started to take place in actual fields. This book muddied my boots and filled my senses. My biggest debt of gratitude is to the artists and pilgrims who so graciously participated in the many interviews that comprise the bulk of the research. I was welcomed into homes, studios, backyards, religious communities, local pubs, and cafés, and—in one case—a restored vintage Giffords Circus trailer in University Parks, Oxford. Thank you to Phil Volker, Hettienne Grobler (Sri BhaktymayiMa), Guy Hayward, William Parsons, Kitty Rice, India WindsorClive, Gisela Insuaste, Tom Nann, James Keay, Sam Lee, Alan Franks, Chiara Ambrosio, and Annie O’Neil for the trust you have placed in me in allowing me to tell these stories . . . your stories. This book has also benefited from comments and feedback provided at various conferences and colloquia. Thank you to Stephanie Nadalo for the suggestion to form a panel at the College Art Association (CAA) conference, and to Cynthia Hahn for her comments as respondent which were formative to this project. Parts of Chapter 3 were presented at the “Artists, Aesthetics and the Natural World” symposium at the David Brower Center, University of California, Berkeley and at the “Pilgrimage and the Senses” conference at the University of Oxford and Chapter 5 was presented at the Muilenberg-Koenig History of Religion Seminar. Large portions of chapters were discussed at lunchtime lectures and salons at the Center for the Arts and Religion (CARe), Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. Thank you to Elizabeth Peña, Director, and curatorial assistant Lydia Webster for the invitations and their gracious hosting. I have long appreciated the welcoming, eminently supportive, and nurturing environment of the annual Symposia for Pilgrimage Studies at the college of William and Mary. George Greenia was instrumental in shaping that forum, and I am grateful for not just the opportunity to float ideas through papers presented there. I am lucky to be ensconced in a very supportive intellectual community in Berkeley and for the generous comments from my colleagues during the many opportunities to discuss the ideas presented here. Thank you to those who gave me judicious feedback especially Purushottama Bilimoria, Cogen Bohanec xi

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(Kiśora Śyāma Dāsa), Kevin Burke, SJ, Thomas Cattoi, Bill Dohar, Daniel Dolley, John Endres, SJ, Rebecca Esterson, Eduardo Fernandez, SJ, George Greiner, SJ, Fredrik Heiding, SJ, Arthur Holder, Munir Jiwa, Bruce Lescher, Scott MacDougall, Mary E. McGann, RSCJ, George Murphy, SJ, James Nati, Jenna Nielsen, Tom Poynor, Hung Pham, SJ, Julia Prinz, VDMF, Jean-François Racine, Carrie Rehak, Chris Renz, OP, Deborah Ross, Julie Rubio, Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, Anh Tran, SJ, Stefan Waligur, and Devin Zuber. Jerome Baggett shared survey templates that I used to collect some of the data for Chapter 5 and the Conclusion. Christopher Hadley, SJ and I offered each other a great deal of mutual moral support as we both raced to finish our book manuscripts while sheltering-inplace during the summer of 2020. The work of the Jesuit School of Theology (JST) of Santa Clara University and the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) would not be possible without our staff, and I am grateful to the awesome work of our behind-the-scenes teams who support faculty research like this. Special thanks go to Mey Saechao, Dianna Finocchiaro Gallagher, Melissa Haddick, Wendy Arce, Diana Magallanes, Angela Munoz, Kathleen Kook, Jasmine Allen, Paul Kircher, and Mary Beth Lamb and, at the GTU library, Clay-Edward Dixon, David Stiver, Caryl Wolfe, Marie Hempen, Jeffrey Jackson, Naw San Dee, KD, Beth Kumar, and Colyn Wohlmut. The academic Deans of JST and the GTU, past and present, supported this project in various ways: Arthur Holder, Uriah Kim, Tom Massaro, SJ, Kevin O’Brien, SJ, Alison Benders, and Joseph Mueller, SJ. I came up for tenure during the process of writing and benefited from the comments of the committee members: Hung Pham, SJ, Naomi Seidman, and Rita Sherma who were able to take a deep dive into the material. I am grateful for their support of my interdisciplinary, interreligious, and auto-ethnographic approach to the material, and their friendship. Gina Hens-Piazza, Paul Janowiak, SJ, Yohana Junker, Chris Renz, OP, and Jen Stager went above and beyond in reading and commenting on sections of the book and the project has greatly benefited from their feedback and support. I would be remiss not to mention Genese Grill and Kate Leadbetter. The rich conversations that we have had over the years helped to shape many of the ideas presented here, especially on materiality and the spirit (Genese) and ideas of cinema and embodiment (Kate). Judith Rodenbeck introduced me to the work of Allan Kaprow in a Sarah Lawrence College art history seminar that continues to resonate. John Eade, whose work has been formative to the field of pilgrimage studies, gave me very helpful feedback as I figured out how to present the augmented understanding of communitas posited through this book, which I have called communitas-through-culture. Early in my

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career at the GTU, Berkeley I became friends with Frank Burch Brown while he was a visiting professor here, and our conversations on the ineffability of music were formative. Parts of Chapters 3 and 5 and the Conclusion were previously published in part, and the versions here have benefited from the feedback of Jessamine Batario, Tom Nickson, Kalpana Jain, Martin Kemp, Jane Garnett, Simon Coleman, and Christopher Ocker. The interviews and fieldwork would not have been possible without the hospitality shown to me along the way. Thank you to Rebecca Graves for the many meals (and, one time, Thanksgiving dinner) during my trips to Vashon Island and to the Cherwell Center and the Society of the Holy Child Jesus for the quiet and picturesque study accommodation during several stays in Oxford. Funding and grants from the Thomas E. Bertelsen Jr. faculty Chair, the George Greenia Research Fellowship in Pilgrimage Studies, and the Center for the Arts and Religion have helped to defray a number of travel and imaging expenses. Early in the writing process, my dear friend and colleague, the art historian Michael Morris, OP died unexpectedly. I was asked to steward some of his enormous book collection in my office, which I was only too glad to do, and many of the texts from his library were formative to the research presented here. The occasional handwritten note, theatre bill, or menu that would flutter out was a reminder of his presence and support. I could not have brought the book to completion without the help of my research assistants; thank you to Emily Pothast for the extensive help with imaging and to Mary Reilly for conducting interviews on the project’s behalf at the National Shrine in DC, as well as for helping me through the first sweep of Phil Volker’s blog, which has now grown twice as long as Don Quixote, or so I am told! I am grateful to Denise Wood at OLV for her support in helping to survey pilgrims. At one point, while continuing my research from California, I sent Rina Frankiel on a BPT pilgrimage in my stead and she accepted the task with aplomb, generously sharing her fieldnotes. Bloomsbury commissioned this book based on the proposal, and I am grateful for the editorial support of Margaret Michniewicz, April Peake, and Yvonne Thouroude as it took a few circuitous and unplanned paths, and to Merv Honeywood during the final stages. Sue Littleford brought us to journey’s end with her patient and careful copyediting. The process of writing this book ended up encompassing the birth of a child, the death of my beloved grandmother (who you can read about in Chapter 2), a global pandemic, and a move, and through all of this my family and friends continued to offer their encouragement and support. Thank you to Sarah Deeds,

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John McBride, and Eleanor Ruckman for their neighborliness and for entertaining the children now and again and to the Barush and Riches families for all that you have done to lift me up over these long years! I owe much to James, who knows how much went into this project (and for so long), to Cynthia for her meticulous reading of early drafts, to Gary, for his moral support, and to my daughter Electra, who was so patient with me. Jack Marian’s pilgrimage of gestation and growth coincided with this book’s, and it is fitting that it be dedicated to him. All Souls’ Day November 2, 2020 Berkeley, CA

Introduction: Pilgrimage as Art, Art as Pilgrimage

This book traverses a circuitous path winding through a forest in the Pacific Northwest, its beginning and end demarcated with a post covered in feathers, finger-worn rosaries, and prayer cards. It contemplates a jar of water collected from Baños de Agua Santa in Ecuador and placed on the dashboard of a former prisoner-transport bus; it sings out famous and forgotten songs unearthed from the archives and rewilded into the landscape where they were composed. It pauses to dwell on a spindly olive tree at the center point of a labyrinth in California; a souvenir statue from a holy grotto enshrined in a cigar box covered in sheet music and lace that smells of oils and incense. It lifts up these and other humble symbols, the people who brought them forth and engage them, and “the intersection of the timeless moment” that they engender.1 Edith Turner, the humanistic anthropologist and scholar of ritual and religion, once wrote that “[a]t the heart of pilgrimage is the folk, the ordinary people who chose a ‘materialist’ expression for their religion. In other words, pilgrimage as a religious act is a kinetic ritual, replete with actual objects, ‘sacra,’ and is often held to have material results, such as healing.”2 This book tells the stories of these people, the pilgrimages they have undertaken, and the artworks and environments they have created which are linked to their journeys and continue to act as vibrant places of encounter and embodied experience. Recent scholarship in the field of medieval studies has established the importance of manuscripts, maps, and labyrinths as sites of mental, or stationary pilgrimage for those who could not travel for a variety of reasons.3 One such example is the story of the Dominican friar Felix Fabri, who was known for recording his own pilgrimages in various formats, some geared toward the laity and some for his brothers. Fabri was approached in the 1490s by a group of cloistered nuns who desired a devotional exercise so that they, too, could receive the spiritual benefits of pilgrimage without having to break their promise of a life that was sheltered from the outside world.4 1

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Fabri produced Die Sionpilger, a pilgrimage-by-proxy in the form of a day-to-day guidebook to Santiago de Compostela, Jerusalem, and Rome. Fabri’s guidebook sent the pilgrim on an imaginative journey of a thousand miles, without having to take a single step. Another example of objects that enact an experience of sacred travel might be the practice of sewing pilgrimage souvenirs in the form of thin, lead badges into illuminated manuscripts, which Foster-Campbell has described as an “aid for personal devotion beyond the temporal and physical experience of a pilgrimage journey—facilitated mental or virtual pilgrimage for the book owner, through memory or imagination” (Figure I.1).5 This is in line with the work of scholars who have shown, through a historical lens, the integral relationship between “place, proximity, sight, and touch” which is tied to attitudes toward relics of the saints but also “intrinsic to the spread of pilgrimage and to the power associated with ‘primary’ holy places and the secondary network of sites which developed through belief in ‘transferable holiness’.”6 Then as in now, tracing a map with a finger, negotiating the circuitous path of a painted labyrinth with the eye, or walking a backyard Camino are actual pilgrimages in and of themselves rather than pale substitutes for the “real thing.” Imaging Pilgrimage shifts the focus from the Middle Ages to the present day in order to examine critically contemporary art that is created after a pilgrimage and intended to act as a catalyst for an embodied experience for others. It follows some of the recent scholarship on pilgrim authorship and narrative, but with a particular attention to how stories emerge, and how they are experienced, through the extratextual.7 There is a continuity of the idea of “transferable holiness” and the afterlife of religious relics and objects with which beholders and artists engage as part of art praxis today, which is presented here through a close examination of a number of specific and thematically interrelated case studies. The rapidly expanding field of studies in the visual and material culture of religion has brought forth a new and powerful awareness within the discipline of art history of the ways in which both viewers and academics can engage with devotional objects. This thriving area of inquiry that has seen the development of a number of centers, initiatives, and publications.8 “Pilgrimage studies” is another emergent area of inquiry from which scholars like Simon Coleman and John Eade have been instrumental in reexamining the critical lexicon of pilgrimage and considering “virtual landscapes” such as Walsingham in England.9 Imaging Pilgrimage brings these various fields into conversation by offering a number of lenses and theoretical approaches (materialist, kinesthetic, haptic,

Introduction: Pilgrimage as Art, Art as Pilgrimage

Figure I.1 The Virgin and Child, Flemish Book of Hours, Use of Rome (c. 1490), manuscript on parchment with pilgrim badges sewn onto the pages, MS. Douce 51, fol. 45v. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

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synesthetic) through which to engage objects that become sites—activated through religious and ritual praxis and negotiated with not just the eyes, but a multiplicity of senses. Each chapter focuses on a contemporary artwork that links one landscape to another—from the Spanish Camino to a backyard in the Pacific Northwest, from Lourdes to South Africa, from Jerusalem to England, and from Ecuador to California. The places and projects are diverse and include vernacular devotional artworks and institutional commissions from artists and creators operating from within and outside the artworld. Some of the artworks were created by Catholics as part of their ongoing spiritual formation; in these cases, the objects are brought into dialogue with notions of pilgrimage that are rooted in scripture and compatible with Church teachings. Many of the artists, however, incorporate a diversity of religious beliefs and ritual into their iconography and praxis, from aspects of Catholic popular piety to Bhakti theology to the honor given to the Apus, the protective spirits of the Andes. The close attention to context and experience also allows for popular practices like the making of contact relics (also called “third-class” relics) to augment conversations about the authenticity or perceived power of a replica or copy; it also challenges the tendency to think of the “original” in hierarchical terms.10 Artwork that engages two or more traditions demands a dialogical approach to comparative religion. In such cases, my focus remains on the interrelated or syncretic aspects of these systems of belief and religious practices as they relate to the material culture of pilgrimage in particular. Throughout the book, I have allowed the voices of artists to come through in order to emphasize their own perceptions of the idea of the transfer of “spirit” from sacred center or landscape to representations, and to address questions of agency and indexicality of religious objects within the specific cultural contexts. In art history, there is a rich bibliography proposing the agency of works of art, including contributions by Hans Belting, David Freedberg, Bruno Latour, and W. J. T. Mitchell.11 Alfred Gell’s art nexus theory in Art and Agency has been both influential and criticized. There are some limits to his lack of engagement with contextual theology; for example, Gell describes “the index” of holy icons of the Virgin Mary which cure those who touch rather than look upon them.12 Although Gell does not exclude fully the role of the “prototype,” a more sustained look at official theologies in conjunction with the popular pietistic practices that arose from them, in terms of devotion but also critique and subversion, add an important nuance to such claims. Such practices and expressions of belief exist

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in distinct ways from culture to culture, and from age to age. One example might be the revival of ancient theories of vision in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which linked sight to touch through a pilgrimage of the eye, or the earlier writings of the twelfth-century mystical theologian Hugh of St. Victor, who described the activation of an eye within that can touch, produce light, and behold past, present, and future all at once.13 The recent collection of essays, Material Christianity: Western Religion and the Agency of Things (C. Ocker and S. Elm, eds.) has shown the lasting potency of the question, “does the human grant meaning to her equipment, or does the ensemble of humans and things spontaneously generate the meanings that she employs?”; this book seeks to contribute to the discourse through the application of these theories in the context of diverse, yet thematically interrelated, case studies.14 It is not my intent either to make theological claims, nor to take a stance of epistemological skepticism, but rather to present focused analyses of these objects, assemblages, songs, and built environments as visual narratives and expressions of belief. In examples where religious traditions are combined in ritual praxis or through objects (like the work of the British Pilgrimage Trust, which was founded with a “BYOB”—“Bring Your Own Beliefs”—axiom), I have drawn out places of pluralism and dialogical encounter.15 An example might be an action like consuming or collecting water from a holy well as a group—a practice that formed part of medieval popular piety, has claim to roots more ancient than that, and which (evinced on the basis of interviews and experience) resonates with people who come from a diversity of religious traditions to walk together across the reopened ancient paths and pilgrimage routes of the British Isles. I aim to construct historically grounded explanations for why these cultural and religious artifacts and actions appear as they do, and how they can generate an embodied religious and spiritual experience for both maker and viewer. In other words, while place-based pilgrimage is an embodied and anagogic practice, as I argue, it can be experienced in its fullness through built environments, assemblages of souvenirs, and vocal chanting. In addition to the extratextual resources, archives, diaries, and extensive interviews and correspondences with artists, curators, and their audiences buttress my claims; as do site visits and fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2019; thick description rooted in contextual detail; and a judicious amount of autoethnography. At the core of this study is the claim that objects collected from, and inspired by, pilgrimages contain history and memory, and act as sites of extratemporal communitas. While indebted to aspects of Edith and Victor Turner’s notion of

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communitas, what I propose here is significantly distinct from how the idea has been marshalled in recent scholarship. Throughout this book, communitas-throughculture is posited as expanding beyond the group of pilgrims and is used rather to think about the complex reception of an object—a “symbol-vehicle,”16 such as a visual representation or song—as a site of community in and of itself where, through the act of viewing or touch, the beholder connects to those who have encountered the object, image, or song before and those who will do so in the future. The Turners employed the term communitas to encapsulate the idea of antistructure, or the removal from the everyday in order to describe spontaneous encounters with others and the possibility of renewal and transformation that occurs on pilgrimage.17 In defining communitas, they cite the example of the Eucharistic ritual due to its common intention. It differs from secular art-viewing through its status as a place of “ritualized reenactment of correspondences between a religious paradigm and shared human experiences.”18 The idea of communitas as experienced by a group has had a continued currency in scholarship, particularly anthropology, and has been applied within a diversity of contexts: rituals, rock concerts, and even political rallies.19 It has also been criticized due to competing ritual practices, unstable relations among groups of pilgrims, and “opposition and conflict between contingents” at sites.20 In this study, I am less interested in the communitas potentially formed between the pilgrim and the group of people with which they are traveling (and I do not make any claims for the homogeneity or shared experiences of such groups). Rather, the focus is on the import of the shrines, sites, landscapes, objects, and songs that spur a sense of community between the pilgrim and with those who have encountered the song/thing in the past, and those who will do so in the future. The idea of a feeling of connection with a community that is perceived, but not physically present, emerges again and again in the context of pilgrims’ descriptions of encounters with landscapes, sites, objects, and (in one instance) collective singing. Sometimes it is expressed in the language of a “cloud of believers” (or witnesses) that includes the living, but not present, as well as the departed;21 others describe the sense of the tangible presence of ancestors, saints, or God.22 It is also compatible with the concept of anamnesis, derived from the Greek word for “to remember,” and used in relation to the liturgy to describe “the promise of the past-present.”23 The artworks that form the focal points of each chapter seek to reactualize the sacred journey, engendering this experience of communitas-through-culture for the beholder.24 Such an approach also allows for the “constellation of elements in dynamic and flexible

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relations with each other” proposed by Coleman and Elsner; pilgrim, site, object, artwork, audience.25 The theory of communitas-through-culture, employed throughout this book in the context of distinct but interrelated case studies, is supported through extensive interviews with the artists who engage objects while on pilgrimage, reuse or incorporate them into assemblages, and the audiences that experience their works. An essential part of pilgrimage is bringing home a token of the place. Such objects served, and still serve, both as proof that the pilgrim had visited the place, and as a physical manifestation of the spirit—or, in Simon Coleman and John Elsner’s words, “charisma” of the sacred center: “In this way, the sacred landscape becomes diffused, permeating even the everyday lives of those who have never been to the site itself.”26 Souvenirs can function as an aid toward reenacting the journey in the imagination for the pilgrim who has traveled to a particular site but also as an “imaginative link” with a sacred landscape or space for someone who hopes to encounter it in the future, hence taking on a transtemporal dimension.27 Chapter 1 focuses on the story of Phil Volker, who mapped the Camino de Santiago onto a plot of land on Vashon Island in the Pacific Northwest following a diagnosis of stage IV cancer. This backyard Camino, and later the documentary film based on the project, are examined as case studies through which to develop the notion of the perceived transfer of “spirit” from sacred site to representation, while acknowledging the historical roots of virtual or “translated” pilgrimages within Catholic devotional practices and popular piety. As Volker emphasizes, “Cancer, Catholicism, and Camino are our center around which we revolve.”28 One feeds into the other; for example, he refers to the difficult and painful days post-chemo as his “Pyrenees weekends,” referring to the physical, spiritual, and emotional hurdle that many pilgrims encounter as they negotiate the mountain range at the beginning of their journey, encountering dangerous terrain and often unpredictable weather.29 I imagine that few pilgrims who have journeyed to Vashon to walk with Volker have shared all of the tenets of his beliefs, nor is professing a specific faith necessary to gleaning the benefits of the backyard Camino or film. However, the rootedness of the project within the realm of Catholic spirituality is what allows some of the points about the efficacy of objects as an adjunct to worship and the metaphor and meaning of pilgrimage (in that tradition) to emerge in this case. I argue that the backyard circuit is not a nostalgic reiteration of a Camino in Spain, but is experienced by many on its own terms. The external walk has also been mapped onto an internal

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transformation, which, in turn, reflects the spirit in which it was created by Volker. Drawing on the work of Christopher Wood, who discusses the potential of “medial shift” from thing to thing, and Vivian Sobchack’s work on film viewing as an embodied experience, I posit that there is a network of meaning connecting the Camino in Spain to the path that Volker forged in the backyard to the documentary film, with mutual participation between media.30 Chapter 2 places the work of South African artist Hettienne Grobler (Sri BhaktymayiMa), who creates shadowboxes of assemblages of souvenirs collected from Lourdes, in dialogue with medieval and nineteenth-century art which is rooted in the same impulses of memory, imagination, and devotion. In addition to Marian imagery, Grobler also draws from Bhakti theology. I contend that the shadowboxes function in much the same way as to-scale or miniaturized reconstructions of myriad sacred sites the world over—both the Lourdes grotto and, as we will see toward the end of the chapter, the Govardhan Eco Village (GEV) located 108 kilometers north of Mumbai in the foothills of the Sahyadri mountains where the entirety of the site is experienced as a new Vrindavan with ārati and other devotions taking place there. These two examples which relate to Grobler’s project are among the many initiatives to build reconstructions of famous holy places that can be accessed by pilgrims who are far from the original site. There is an implicit ecological imperative embedded in Grobler’s art and in these larger-scale projects which all work through what Colleen McDannell might call a culturally constructed authenticity—the need to physically travel to a specific site is mitigated through being able to interact with the souvenirs, water, and objects collected there. In this time of climate crisis, the possibility of objects that can engender an experience of pilgrimage remotely as a way to mitigate environmental impact remains a leitmotif throughout this book. Chapter 3 moves from the built environment to aural expression. I contend that music, like objects, can function as a site of communitas. My focus is on a collective of artists, musicians, writers, and pilgrims who formed an organization called the British Pilgrimage Trust and aim to “rescue” and “rewild” songs, both ancient and modern. By doing so, they create an intentional temporal shift through the use of melody and lyrics, underscoring the continued importance of landscape in aural cultural expression. The chapter triangulates the ritual practice of singing and sound-making, the importance of the embodied experience of moving through the British landscape in this process, and, finally, visual artwork that has emerged from these journeys, in particular drawings by Kitty Rice and India Windsor-Clive that were created during and after a 2016 pilgrimage

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inspired by Blake’s poem “And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time” (now known as Jerusalem—set to music by Sir Hubert Parry in the twentieth century). Recent scholarship in the field of critical musicology has begun to take seriously the “ineffable dimension of music” and its potential for transcendence and re-enchantment.31 This chapter draws on art historical and anthropological approaches usually used to discuss objects as well as work on the ineffable in musicology in order to further explore the role of music in terms of translating the pilgrimages of the past into the present.32 Chapter 4 turns to an installation piece on a former prisoner-transport vehicle by visual artist Gisela Insuaste entitled Haciendo marcas otra vez (“Making Marks, Again”). The piece comprises sculptural elements as well as an altarcito (little altar) containing an assemblage of objects and souvenirs collected from pilgrimage sites. I argue that the bus installation generates a multivalent viewing experience. This is achieved by bringing this and other related works by Insuaste into dialogue with American painter, assemblagist, and pioneer of “Happenings” Allan Kaprow’s theory of “reinventions” and, like the other chapters in this book, examines Insuaste’s praxis in light of an augmented understanding of the Turnerian notion of communitas. Widening the aperture, the chapter asks whether artists, curators, and museum educators today help audiences understand the performative, interactive, and multisensorial dimensions of devotional practices, past and present, and what it might mean for sacred objects to be recontextualized in a space like an old prisoner-transport bus converted into a roving contemporary gallery. Haciendo marcas otra vez is representative of much of Insuaste’s work in that the installation comprises intentionally assembled objects, found, collected, and created—each giving visibility to stories of trauma and healing, and especially her own family’s experience of immigration from Ecuador to the USA in the 1970s. Following Margaret Kovach’s approach of holding up story as Indigenous methodology, I aim to honor the “interrelationship between narrative and research,” allowing method and meaning to work in tandem to form a “culturally nuanced way of knowing” through Insuaste’s art-making and my own embodied viewership.33 The final chapter continues to build on the idea of the transfer of “spirit” from a sacred locus to a representation through a focused study of the outdoor labyrinth at the Jesuit Retreat Center of Los Altos—El Retiro San Iñigo, California, designed and installed by Tom Nann in 2014. There has been a recent proliferation of modern labyrinths embedded in pavement, built of stone, and sculpted into turf, often popularly imagined as scaled-down pilgrimages to Jerusalem, or even

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through the cosmos. Labyrinths have begun to be instated in environments like public parks and hospitals, and the practice of negotiating these spaces has been adopted widely as part of meditative practices across a diversity of religious traditions. The Los Altos labyrinth is considered within the context of Ignatian spirituality, drawing on the experiences of pilgrims, retreatants, and Nann—all of whom have described a sense of divine presence while walking the circuitous path. Ignatian spirituality, which involves being in harmony with creation and an emphasis on the active presence of the divine among people and things, offers a particular lens through which to examine an embodied, anagogic experience that is facilitated through an aid to imagination—in this case, a built environment. Given the compatibility of these tenets with that of several contemplative traditions, labyrinths can be posited as a nexus for a dialogical approach to comparative religion, and the theoretical constructs and methods applied are intended to have potential to expand beyond this delineated scope. The finished manuscript for this book was submitted before the global pandemic of Covid-19 struck, but the project has taken on a particular import in light of quarantines, lockdowns, and travel restrictions. Pilgrims have faced travel delays and cancellations for centuries. Reasons ranged from financial hardship and agricultural responsibilities to what is now all too familiar to modern-day pilgrims; plague or poor health. Then, as now, one strategy has been to bring the pilgrimage home or into the religious community. The pandemic has inspired myriad opportunities for pilgrimages in place. This has included an increase in “virtual tours” of religious sites and landscapes to social media pages where participants walk a number of miles a day, sometimes mapping their journey onto an established pilgrimage route by tracking their progress on a map (à la Phil’s Camino).34 The opportunities for sacred travel examined in detail as case studies throughout Imaging Pilgrimage are open and accessible to pilgrims of varying abilities and limited mobility (including quarantine); they beget an experience of long-distance travel without the physical exertion of continual, daily walking or the massive environmental impact of air travel in this moment of climate crisis.35 Volker’s Camino can be negotiated with a riding lawn-mower and other projects engage the senses (sight, touch, smell, sound) in varying capacities to usher the pilgrim into the space of a faraway landscape. The concluding section distills several of the themes that emerged throughout my research, including scientific advances that have begun to quantifiably measure the ancient wisdom of the healing benefits of pilgrimage activities such as walking, viewing sacred artworks, and chanting. The process of bringing this

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book to fruition also revealed a fascinating web of interrelated projects in the contemporary art world across traditions and cultures as the people I interviewed pointed me toward many others creating work in a similar vein. Victor and Edith Turner note that pilgrimage sites function as a “ritualized reenactment of correspondences between a religious paradigm and shared human experiences.”36 Following this line of reasoning, I aim to show that objects can act as sites in and of themselves, becoming radical places of embodied encounter.

Notes 1 The phrase comes from T. S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding” in Four Quartets, c. 1940–2 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1943). 2 E. Turner in V. Turner and E. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), XIII. This book also engages playfully the title of the Turner’s much-cited contribution to pilgrimage studies, shifting the focus to “imaging” with its connotations of making, creating, and visually recording pilgrimage. 3 See, for example, D. K. Connolly, “Imagined Pilgrimages in Gothic Art: Maps, Manuscripts, and Labyrinths” (University of Chicago, PhD thesis, 1998), 1; and K. M. Rudy, “A Guide to Mental Pilgrimage: Paris, Bibliothèque de L’Arsenal Ms. 212,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 63/4 (2000), 494–515. 4 K. Beebe, “Reading Mental Pilgrimage in Context: The Imaginary Pilgrims and Real Travels of Felix Fabri’s ‘Die Sionpilger’,” Essays in Medieval Studies, 25 (2008), 39–70. 5 M. Foster-Campbell, “Pilgrims’ Badges in Late Medieval Devotional Manuscripts,” in S. Blick and L. D. Gelfand (eds.), Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art (Leiden: Brill, 2011), Vol. I, 229. 6 D. Dyas “To Be a Pilgrim: Tactile Piety, Virtual Pilgrimage and the Experience of Place in Christian Pilgrimage,” in J. Robinson, L. de Beer, and A. Harnden (eds.), Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period (London: British Museum, 2014), 1. Several other essays in the volume, published in conjunction with the exhibition Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, cited passim, explore the topic from various angles. For the catalogue, see M. Bagnoli, H. A. Klein, C. G. Mann, and J. Robinson (eds.), Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Walters Art Museum, 2010). See also C. Hahn, The Reliquary Effect: Enshrining the Sacred Object (London: Reaktion, 2017). I am grateful to Hahn for moderating our c. 2019 College Art Association panel which, in part, considered

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Imaging Pilgrimage the afterlife of relics in contemporary art including the work of Chiara Ambrosio (conclusion) and Gisela Insuaste (Chapter 4). See, for example, P. Edwards, Pilgrimage and Literary Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and S. Coleman and J. Elsner (eds.), Pilgrim Voices: Narrative and Authorship in Christian Pilgrimage (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002). For a medieval approach to Chaucerian narrative through images, see V. A. Kolve’s Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984). See, for example, the efforts of Yale University’s Center for the Study of Material & Visual Cultures of Religion, http://mavcor.yale.edu, C. McDannell’s pioneering Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), D. Morgan and S. Promey’s extensive work in the area including The Visual Culture of American Religions (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), G. Harvey and J. Hughes (eds.), Sensual Religion (Sheffield: Equinox, 2018), the peer-reviewed journal Material Religion (Taylor & Francis, 2005 to the present), and The Baron Thyssen Centre for the Study of Ancient Material Religion (Open University, https://www.openmaterialreligion.org). S. Coleman and J. Eade (eds.), Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion (London: Routledge, 2004). In scholarship (including the Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, 2010: https:// referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/encyclopedia-of-medieval-pilgrimage) and also Catholic popular piety, a first-class relic is the bodily remains of a saint (or relics of the Passion of Christ), a second-class relic is something worn by or owned by the saint, and third-class relic is something like a prayer card or ribbon which has come into contact with a first- or second-class relic. In her comprehensive essay on the origin of these terms and understandings of their use, J. M. H. Smith has noted that the classification is “a mid-twentieth-century variant on the categories prescribed in post-Tridentine canon law” and highlights a key point, which is the “tension between spontaneous and officialized veneration” (“Relics: An Evolving Tradition in Latin Christianity,” in C. Hahn and H. Klein (eds.), Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2015), 42). See further discussion within various artistic contexts (index, “relics”) and also S. Coleman and M. Bowman, “Religion in Cathedrals: Pilgrimage, Heritage, Adjacency, and the Politics of Replication in Northern Europe,” Religion, 49/1 (2019). Whose theories have been applied within various contexts throughout the present volume. A. Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 32. R. Osborne and J. Tanner’s Art’s Agency and Art History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) presents a number of approaches to the anthropology of art to

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disciplines including sociology, linguistics, and art history. Critical approaches to Art and Agency include H. Morphy, “Art as a Mode of Action: Some Problems with Gell’s Art and Agency,” Journal of Material Culture, 14/1 (2009) and R. Layton, “Art and Agency: A Reassessment,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 9/3 (2003), 447–64. 13 See pp. 63–4, 140. 14 C. Ocker and S. Elm (eds.), Material Christianity: Western Religion and the Agency of Things (Cham: Springer, 2020), 9 referring to the questions posed by McDannell, Material Christianity, 2. 15 Now also “OTA”—“Open to All”; the BPT promotes the idea that everyone can make a pilgrimage among Britain’s spiritual landscape. See p. 107. 16 For a discussion of Victor and Edith Turner’s concept of the symbol-vehicle, see Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture, pp. 160-161 and passim. 17 Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 13 and 250–4. 18 Ibid., 254. 19 F. A. Salamone and M. M. Snipes (eds.) The Intellectual Legacy of Victor and Edith Turner (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018). 20 J. Eade and M. Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (Urbana, IL: Illinois University Press, 1991) and Sallnow, “Communitas Reconsidered: The Sociology of Andean Pilgrimage,” Man, 16/2 (1981), 173. For a perspective on some of the limits of the contestation model, see S. Coleman and J. Elsner, “Contesting Pilgrimage: Current Views and Future Directions,” Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 15/3 (1991), 63–73. 21 P. Volker, Caminoheads blog (http://caminoheads.com/); this idea appears in the entries for May 8, 2016, July 3, 2017, March 13, 2018, September 9, 2019 and is developed in Chapter 1. 22 This idea is discussed later, pp. 114–15, in relation to Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of “resonance.” 23 As expressed by my friend, colleague, and frequent conversation partner, Paul Janowiak, SJ. Anamnesis describes the moment in which “an event is recalled not only as a past occurrence but also, and more importantly, as a present and effective saving reality . . . [a]ll Christian worship is fundamentally amamnesis.” D. C. Smolarski, SJ, A Glossary of Liturgical Terms (Chicago: Liturgical Training Publications, 2017), 6. 24 “Every religious festival, every liturgical time, represents the reactualization of a sacred event that took place in a mythical past, ‘in the beginning’,” M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harcourt, 1959), 68–9. 25 Coleman and Elsner, “Contesting Pilgrimage,” 69. 26 S. Coleman and J. Elsner, Pilgrimage: Past and Present in the World Religions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 6.

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27 Ibid., 6. 28 Volker, from a blog entry dated May 15, 2017 (http://caminoheads.com/). 29 See, for example ibid., April 30, 2017: “This is my bad weekend in the chemo cycle. Catherine calls it my Pyrenees weekend.” 30 C. Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) and V. Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004) and “Embodying Transcendence: On the Literal, the Material, and the Cinematic Sublime,” Material Religion, 4/2 (2008), 194–203. Chapter 2 considers the possibility of a photograph to become a third-class relic by virtue of touch, and perhaps there is a similar transfer, or translation, from site to site to film. 31 D. Brown and G. Hopps, The Extravagance of Music (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 7. See also Frank Burch Brown’s extensive work in this area including “Aesthetics and the Arts in Relation to Natural Theology” in R. Re Manning (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) and Good Taste, Bad Taste, and Christian Taste: Aesthetics in Religious Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 32 Karst has posited a theory of translation that creates accessibility for a sacred site “beyond the borders” of the original, “A New Creation: Translating Lourdes in America,” Liturgy, 32/3 (2017), 31 and discussion at pp. 21, 77, 98 n. 52, 144. See also Rupert Sheldrake, Science and Spiritual Practices: Transformative Experiences and Their Effects on Our Bodies, Brains, and Health (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2018). 33 M. Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press), 94. 34 The opportunities for online experiences as well as the press archive continues to grow. See S. Salaz, “10 Catholic Pilgrimages that Don’t Require a Passport,” US Catholic (June 9, 2020); Northwest Catholic, “Making a Pilgrimage at Home,” Northwest Catholic, 8/6 (2020); K. Barush, “As Coronavirus Curtails Travel, Backyard Pilgrimages Become the Way to a Spiritual Journey,” The Conversation (August 10, 2020). Annie O’Neil, director/producer of Phil’s Camino, founded a social-media group called Pilgrimage in Place (PIP) focused on conjunctions between interior journey and physical pilgrimage. The British Pilgrimage Trust offers photo essays in conjunction with GPX files for smartphones. Another is the Virtual Camino de Santiago via Facebook, sponsored by a travel company, in which food writers, art and cultural historians, past pilgrims, musicologists, musicians, artists and others introduce the sights and sounds along the way. Folks can even pick up a .jpg “badge” to take the place of the traditional scallop shell that pilgrims have fastened onto their hats or packs since the Middle Ages. 35 This includes, at the top of the list, the thirty million pilgrims who travel to Ayyappan Saranam, India and twenty million who travel to the shrine of Our Lady

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of Guadalupe in Mexico annually. According to statistics collected by the Pilgrim Office in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in 2015 alone 262,516 pilgrims completed the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, many of whom flew to St. Jean Pied de Port to begin their pilgrimages. See Bruce Feiler, “The New Allure of Sacred Pilgrimage,” New York Times (December 20, 2014) and Alliance of Religions and Conservation, Pilgrimage Statistics—Annual Figures, 2014 (http://www.arcworld.org/projects. asp?projectID=500). 36 Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 254.

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Vashon Island → Spain1 A Backyard Camino

On a hand-drawn map of a ten-acre plot on Vashon Island near Seattle in the Pacific Northwest, Phil Volker has labeled, in gently sloping capital letters, the north and south pastures, the garden and the corn patch, the woodlot, and Raven Creek (Figure 1.1). A map is not strictly necessary while walking the path thanks to the helpful yellow arrows carved into wood and affixed to trees and fences that point the way. The trail is a roughly clover-shaped circuit bordered in places by towering fir trees and smaller hardwoods; at one point, five irregular stones form a rustic bridge across the creek. It is a path that Volker has walked many times, and with many companions. On the right-hand side of the map, the same lettering explains: Blessed by Father Marc, we opened the Camino on Dec. 21st 2013. Between then + May 12th 2014 I walked 909 laps to equal 500 miles or the length of the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I walked alone and with others in all kinds of weather. Time was available to pray, think, laugh, cry, discuss + wonder.2

Somewhere around the time that he was diagnosed with colon cancer (now in his lungs, having reached stage IV), Volker had started to dream of walking the ancient pilgrimage path through the Pyrenees to Galicia—but with frequent chemotherapy treatments it seemed impossible. What he did instead was to bring the Camino to the land that he calls home,3 laying out a backyard trail that measured 0.88 kilometers and calculating that 909 laps would get him from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, where many pilgrims set off along the “French Way” to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.4 Although seemingly far away, the salty sea physically links Vashon Island to the Galician Coast where the remains of St. James the Greater, son of Zebedee, were said to have washed up in biblical times. He had ceased his work as a successful fisherman to follow Jesus, and, according to an ancient legend, even 17

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Figure 1.1 Phil Volker, map of Backyard Camino, ink and colored pencils on paper, c. 2013.

traveled as far as Spain to preach the Gospel. Upon completing a period of ministry and mission there, he returned to Judea and was put to death at King Herod’s orders. After his martyrdom, two of his own disciples transported his body to shore where they found a miraculous boat which is said to have conveyed his remains back to Spain. By the twelfth century, Santiago de Compostela was a flourishing center of pilgrimage, only surpassed in popularity and importance by Rome and Jerusalem. Many made, and continue to make, the arduous physical and spiritual pilgrimage, including St. Francis of Assisi. As Volker’s spiritual director, Sr. Joyce Cox, BVM put it, through Volker’s project, “[a] solidarity uniting both Spain and Vashon developed” (Figure 1.2).5 I argue here that this interlinking of one landscape with another can be understood as an example of “transferable holiness.”6 Volker’s creative mapping of the pilgrimage route itself connects the project to the medieval tradition of mental or “transferred” pilgrimage for those who could not travel on foot to faraway locales for a variety of reasons, such as tenure to the land, lack of resources, economic hardship, or—like Volker, ill health.7 Rather than setting up a strict

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Figure 1.2 Sr. Joyce Cox, BVM and Phil Volker on the backyard Camino. Photo: Steve Tosterud.

dichotomy between contemplative (mental) and place-based pilgrimage, the interlinking senses of the term must be acknowledged. Religious architecture and landscapes functioned throughout the long history of Christian art as temporal reminders of a promised land to come as mediated through artistic practice. Then, as now, literal journeys were themselves understood as metaphorical in the sense that they were microcosmic, geographic versions of the universal pilgrimage of the soul.8 From a broader perspective of pilgrimages and world religions, Coleman and Elsner have discussed not only the metaphorical resonances of geographical pilgrimages but also the function of objects (like the backyard Camino) and texts as memorials for the pilgrim and as a link to the sacred goal for those who would undertake a future journey.9 The critical lexicon for discussing this reciprocal relationship is still being developed, but Volker’s Camino is an example of this process in action. The focus on the present day and its inherent links to the distant past, and to the Camino de Santiago, through the project of mapping an ancient European pilgrimage route onto a backyard in North America complements and expound upon the notion of place-based pilgrimage as a manifestation of “temporal past and future manifested in the spatial, [symbolic of] eschatological hope as well as

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paradigmatic memory.”10 It is also a contemporary example of how images are linked to their “authenticating sources in remotest times by chains of images,” as Wood has discussed in the context of the late Middle Ages.11 As I argue here, this is reflected in several ways through Volker’s intentional but also instinctive ritual practices, in the embodied process of forging the trail, and in the meaning ascribed to it by pilgrims. When asked about the takeaways of the backyard Camino, one pilgrim wrote about the “potency of parallel experiences—the efficacy and beauty of re-creating a powerful milieu within a local setting.”12 Volker’s project emerged out of a desire not to copy, but to continue the experience of the Camino as an extension of Spain in the Pacific Northwest, and offers a productive lens through which to flesh out some of these ideas.13 In his words, “we have to cobble together our separate Camino in our separate locality, same reality. This is very tricky in the sense of how one sets into motion a new life in the same old place.”14 This chapter engages such questions of temporality and communitas-through-culture by looking first at the origins of the backyard Camino and the community that it has generated since. The focus then turns to the material culture and symbolic structures that both comprise the route and which can be found along the way. Finally, an exploration of the film based on Volker’s project continues to develop these themes. For some of the pilgrims who travel to the Vashon backyard, the circuit-walk is a visceral reminder of their own journey along the Camino de Santiago. As his neighbor Kelly Burke attests: I have walked Camino de Santiago twice in the last couple years. The backyard version is just as good as the real one except shorter. It [gives] you time [to] think about the world, forget your worries, and help solve your problems in your life through walking and talking.15

For others, it is experienced completely on its own terms, as is the case for those who learn about the Camino for the first time through an encounter with Volker or his trail. Some have been inspired to travel to Spain after walking the backyard circuit, which is perhaps an example of Benjamin’s insistence that “in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced.”16 Eighty years later, scholars are still working on developing a critical lexicon to discuss the idea of this kind of transfer of spirit from place to place. In an article written while I was working on this book, I posited Volker’s Camino as a “surrogate pilgrimage.”17 It became clear to me eventually that “surrogate” was not the right word to describe what

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was, and still is, happening there. In fact, when I sent Volker a link to the article, he quickly pointed out to me that the backyard Camino is not so much a replica, let alone a “surrogate,” since people have now traveled from all corners of the world to walk it. Sometimes this happens in tandem with a past or future walk in Spain, but certainly not always. Volker put it simply and clearly when he wrote early on in the process: “it’s really not all that complicated and it is achieving a life of its own.”18 In terms of the development of a critical lexicon, a helpful suggestion arrived by way of Layla Karst, who acknowledged my attempt to “bring to light how . . . spaces [like the backyard Camino] serve to replicate not the sacred landscape, but rather the sacred rituals and practices” and suggested another model, which is signaled throughout this book: the French Jesuit theorist Michel de Certeau’s idea of translation. As Karst points out, it “brings to light the ways these spaces, practices, and narratives take on a life and significance of their own, even while these characteristics of the original space persist . . . [f]or Certeau, neither translation nor writing can entirely capture or convey the ‘otherness’ of the original, but it can succeed in making the original accessible in new systems or places.”19 This is, in effect, what Volker expressed in his comment about the Camino “achieving a life of its own.” Volker’s own daily writings and real-time comments from pilgrims who have walked the backyard Camino further substantiate the claim that there is value to the embodied ritual practice of moving through the backyard circuit. As one visitor wrote: I didn’t come to [Volker’s] Camino to figure anything out and yet as I walked those laps on multiple days I began to have very personal experiences, emotional and spiritual. I gained insights and felt connected to a deeper intuitive part of myself I had never experienced before. I had answers come to me I didn’t even know I had questions for. And perhaps most importantly was not only a greater understanding of community and connection but that we have the power to live and create the kind of life we want to live. I have the power to live and create the kind of life I want to [live].20

It is significant to note that for this particular pilgrim, like Burke, the backyard route was not a nostalgic reiteration of a Camino in Spain, but again was experienced on its own terms. The external walk mapped onto an internal transformation, which is a reflection of the spirit in which it was created. Volker’s Camino is a living channel that connects the constant procession of pilgrims to the resting place of St. James to the Vashon backyard in Washington State.

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From Cyrene to the Veranda: origins and continuities The backyard Camino was in part inspired by the book Mapping, by David Greenhood, which Volker found in a second-hand store on Vashon. He found the story of the Greek poet Eratosthenes of Cyrene by turning to a random page. Eratosthenes was the first person to measure the earth. Greenhood points out that one of the results “of this feat was that it suggested a simple but fruitful principle: ‘this little means that much.’ This is the essence of what map-makers mean by SCALE.”21 Coincidentally, but also poetically, Eratosthenes’ apparatus consisted of objects that mirror a pilgrim’s main tools of earthly navigation: the sun, an upright stick, and a well that was 500 miles away (which happens to mirror the length of the Camino de Santiago). The story encapsulates the idea of imaginative mapping and travel through touch, sight, and the aperture of a scaled-down representation of the landscape or the world. It grabbed Volker’s attention simply because of “the thought that maybe the average guy has the potential to pull something amazing off [right in the] backyard. It is a very inspiring thought.”22 Spending time with Volker reveals that he is humbled, and a little bit surprised by the situation he has found himself in through the popularity of the backyard pilgrimage. He calls himself a “do-it-yourself kind of guy.” In a recent interview he gave the example of needing bookshelves built—where many might go to a box store for flatpacks, he would personally prefer to whack them together with some 2×4s that he had on hand.23 Sr. Cox made a similar point in relation to the backyard Camino; it was something necessitated by the prescribed exercise regimen when he started chemo treatments, and the initial path-making was instinctive, ultimately filling a need. Both instances are characteristic of the determination and faith that has fueled his life, which began on the shortest day of the year during a cold Buffalo winter in 1947. Volker ran cross-country and track in high school, then attended the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University, where he majored in Landscape Architecture. Afterward, he served in the US Marine Corps for three years, studied fine arts at SUNY Buffalo, and eventually moved to Washington State. There he spent another year studying fine arts at the University of Washington after which he forged a career as a carpenter, founding the company Phil Volker Custom Woodwork. His deep fondness for Europe developed after a trip to Barcelona, Rome, Malta, and Athens in 2003. Given his love of art and carpentry, it is appropriate that he took the name of St. Joseph the Worker when he was received into the Catholic Church in 2013. After blazing that half-mile trail in the backyard, he calculated

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that 909 laps would get him from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, and so he strapped on his boots and started walking. Related to the themes in Greenhood’s Mapping essay, about a year after he first started walking the Camino in the backyard, Volker reflected on how understanding a little bit of something can lead to a greater comprehension of the whole (like a table of contents in a book). In doing so, he inadvertently and aptly described the fundamental nature of the backyard Camino project. He wrote, “I tend to gather broad landscapes and try to boil them down to their essence”24 and, later, “I have a trail where I paint with mud.”25 When I first mentioned that the backyard Camino could be thought of as a “built environment” or “land art,” my sense was that Volker was a little bemused. In thinking about the connotations of both of those terms in sociology and art history, I prefer “built environment” in line with the environments and grottoes by visionary artists, discussed in Chapter 2. The connotation is one of non-invasive interventions like assemblages of vibrant matter or a living path through the forest (as in the case of the backyard Camino) rather than the blasting and permanent scarring, and sometimes irrevocable alterations on Native land, in particular, that comes with the idea of “Land Art.”26 The trail will not leave any permanent marks on the landscape which was once the home of the Sxwobabc and Puyallup people before the destructive white settlement projects.27 It is not overly cultivated. There is a corn patch that feeds the Volker family guests through the winter (everything is dried, frozen, made into meal) and he beats back the blackberries enough that a person with mobility issues can ride the mower through the trail, but the whole thing is totally ephemeral. The tools and theories available in the realm of art history (and the studies of the material culture of religion) can help shed light on the importance of the backyard trail as an embodied (re)presentation. It is linked to the Camino in Spain but functions, on its own terms, as a place of healing and renewal for Volker and for the pilgrims who have joined him. As a built environment, the backyard Camino falls into the tradition of religious artworks that collapse the boundaries between making and meaning. As one pilgrim put it in a note to Volker, “you just create with footsteps and words. Your choreography is your Camino and your canvas is your soul.”28 Bruno Latour invokes examples from the canon of sacred artwork to argue the case for re-presentation; there is a flow, he says, a “continuing [of] the process begun by the image.” He cites, for example, the case of St. Gregory who “continues the text of the Eucharist when he sees the Christ in his real and not symbolic flesh, and

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the painter continues the miracle when he paints the representation in a picture that reminds us of what it is to understand really what this old mysterious text is about.” Latour suggests that even he, as theorist, continues “the painter’s continuation of the story reinterpreting the text, if, by using slides, arguments, tones of voices, anything, really anything at hand, I make you aware again of what it is to understand those images without searching for a prototype, and without distorting them in so many information-transfer vehicles.”29 Perhaps if we think of the backyard Camino as a sacred artwork within this same historical/ cultural lineage before and after Gregory, the complexities of the immediacy of the pilgrimage experience can be “re-understood.”30 Latour is talking about Eucharist, painting, and language, and so the backyard project does not precisely map onto his theory (and it is not my intention to force this point unnecessarily), but rather to underscore the overarching idea that the Camino is not static, but rather part of a process of information transfer and lineage that can result in a renewal of spirit. Volker initially forged the path as a pilgrim and remains so with each walk, seeing anew as others join him and as the seasons change. The river water ebbs and flows, the last leaves fall and the first leaves emerge in that greenish-gold of spring, the corn rises and is harvested. It is an opportunity for an embodied experience on multiple levels. Sr. Cox recalled that “One afternoon he brought his doctor to meet me, a Buddhist who was convinced that Phil had a kind of inside map, not just the Camino, but a positive attitude that reached out to other cancer patients with new hope for their own cures.”31 The interior map has become an exterior path. As he put it: I am so much of a kinesthetic learner maybe but I get so much more out of putting my whole body into something. Now that is just me but the trail has that aspect, you have to admit. As one walks long enough and hard enough part of us actually becomes the trail. We sort of donate it. We give it away. We don’t need it any more. And that sudden empty space in us is where God moves into. It’s holy implant. He isn’t an idea any more. This is the trail, the new church.32

Volker is not saying that the backyard Camino should replace the Church, but rather that it has become a place that God inhabits and where pilgrims can, and do, encounter the divine. The experiential side here is crucial as bodies, with varying degrees of ability, negotiate the clover-shaped path through the course of an hour or the course of a season.

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The vocation of building, walking, and maintaining the backyard Camino eventually led to the pilgrim “Veranda” party over the course of a weekend in late August 2019, just as the corn in the field bordering the path was reaching peak ripeness. The name for the party came from what Volker envisioned as a sort of metaphorical community porch, but, more than that, a vantage point from which to contemplate the past and future and where communitas could be enacted. He described it as: Big enough to hold a group. Maybe there are those wicker chairs that the air can blow through to lend to our comfort. The Veranda has a comfortable hold on us, bringing us together when we have been off on separate adventures and quests. Some of us have been injured, some have won awards, some have created, some destroyed. But the Veranda holds us so that we can reunite and its time provides us with the opportunity to see how we have grown while apart. We are together now and out of the glare that is often taken for reality. The din and the glare, they go together. But that seems far away for all of us now. We loosen our ties and let our hair down, we plan to stay for a while. Air is moving to keep things fresh and to rid us of the unwanted. Maybe it means the weather is up for a change. The Veranda will shelter us in a shower and we are beyond worry.33

Volker had issued an open invitation earlier in the year to anyone who was interested to come walk with him, share in a community potluck of tapas, and glorious crumbles and crisps made from an abundance of late summer Vashon Island blackberries, and steamed ears of corn drenched in salt and butter. The gathering was, in essence, about radical and abundant love and communitas, and (although Volker would flush red with the thought) to celebrate the deep wisdom that has come with living in the liminal space between life and death for a (medically speaking) unprecedented number of years. In the documentary film Phil’s Camino (discussed in detail in the section “Film as pilgrimage”), Volker’s oncologist, David Zucker, MD, PhD of the Swedish Cancer Institute in Seattle, reads a passage on “boundary experiences” from Irvin Yalom’s article on “Religion and Psychiatry.”34 Yalom discusses the shift from the everyday state to an ontological state of “mindfulness and being in which we live authentically and marvel at the very ‘suchness’ of things,” which is, in essence, what Turner and Turner describe as the condition of liminality. Sacred symbols, they write, lead to a sympathy between the pilgrim and others, with the “trials of the long route” creating an openness and vulnerability that may not have been in place before embarking on the journey.35 Confrontation with death is probably the most potent of boundary experiences, but it is clear that the backyard Camino is also

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a space where pilgrims undergo a significant perspectival shift. The daily practice of intentional and prayerful walking has led Volker and some of the companions who have joined him to significant revelations. The gathering was predicated on some of these including the potent value of hospitality and the wisdom that comes from a daily immersion in the rhythms and patterns of the natural world and in one’s own body. At the Veranda, the backyard pilgrim community walked together, cried together, gave some spontaneous speeches, and even sang. “You know how some people have their memorial service before they die? . . . Well, this is kind of like that,” Volker mused at one point. Rebecca Graves, his wife, belongs to the Threshold Choir, a group originally founded by Kate Munger in California which took seed in the late 1990s and who sing for those going through major transitions and facing “death, grief, or suffering.”36 Volker had built a plywood stage in the yard, and on Saturday evening three of the women of the Vashon Threshold Choir led the gathering in a simple chant by Ram Dass with the lyrics, “We are all just walking each other home.” Munger had taken note of these words on the entrance to a labyrinth at the Spring Equinox, and if melody and lyrics are able to engender communitas (as explored in Chapter 3, on pilgrimage song and chant), this was one of those occasions. As Munger says, “[w]e are healed by our songs before the vibrations ever leave our bodies.” Of course, Volker also led the pilgrim group through the backyard Camino. He had slowed down his daily walk until there were just two laps left to Santiago de Compostela in preparation for the gathering, so all the participants could walk in to the “cathedral” together. We shared from a communal cup under the weeping willow tree that provides a leafy summertime roof over the post and stone pile that mark the eternal beginning-and-end of each 0.88-kilometer lap.

“I have a trail where I paint with mud”: material culture of the backyard Camino The first thing the pilgrim encounters when embarking on the Vashon Island backyard Camino is the verdant weeping willow tree, and in the dappled shade created by the branches is rock pile and wooden post. It marks the end and beginning of the trail, and in the five or so years since my first visit the souvenirs and pilgrimage objects left there as symbols of hopes and blessings have grown exponentially—there are now feathers, thumb-tacked photographs and prayer

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cards, rosaries, river stones, and Santiago scallop shells (Plate 1). The stone pile was inspired by the Cruz de Ferro on the Camino de Santiago, a monumental version of the arrangement in Volker’s yard with a cross large enough to be seen from some distance. There are many legends and oral histories attached to the site; some of the stones represent “burdens” or things pilgrims wish to let go of, but others are placed along with hopeful prayers, or as tokens of gratitude. It is a deeply personal ritual. In the guidebook that is now ubiquitous along the Camino, John Brierley states that the cross “has become one of the abiding symbols of the pilgrim way of St. James” and suggests that pilgrims “take time to reconnect with the purpose of your journey before adding your stone or other token of love and blessing to the great pile that witnesses our collective journeying.”37 Next to the post and stones is a table with a chalice filled with a little wine and a notebook wherein Volker records those with whom he walked during each lap and maps where he is in the backyard walk in relation to the Spanish Camino. On Volker’s Camino, there is a tangible presence of both the community that is physically present and those who are absent, but held in remembrance, often mediated through material culture. At some point early on in his logbookkeeping process, Volker decided no longer to record walks where there were no physical companions as “alone,” as we see in an entry from September of 2015: “So I was off walking this AM trying to get to Pamplona. I was alone although I know that is not true really.”38 In this case, the built environment facilitates a tangible connection between persons across time; those who have come before and all those who will come again. Volker describes his project as “a sanctuary from normal life,” compatible with the Turner’s description of communitas as a removal from everyday spaces and routines in order to describe spontaneous encounters with others and the possibility of renewal and transformation that occurs on the sacred journey.39 This is, in essence, not unlike the invitation to join one’s voice with the choir of saints and angels during the Eucharistic celebration.40 Lauren Artress, Episcopalian priest, spiritual director, and honorary Canon of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, was responsible for the installation of a large-scale pavement labyrinth there, and later wrote a book reflecting on the rediscovery of walking labyrinths as a spiritual practice.41 Her comments in the preface underscore the commonalities between these ancient pathways and Volker’s Camino in theory and praxis. She writes that the “labyrinth serves as a sacred container. The clear physical boundaries of the pattern, which contain both the circle and the spiral, offer a feeling of safety. This container is even more

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powerful when we add community. New emotions, unique thoughts, and a sense of being at one with others can enter our awareness.”42 After the Veranda party, Volker wrote in his journal about being safely held in the “flow of pilgrims,” which he explained in a comment is like the “Cloud of Believers” or the “Communion of Saints.”43 Labyrinths, like Volker’s Camino, hold in common their form of a continuous pathway, or single circuit, that weaves in and out toward a center and back again (Volker’s Camino is in a four-leaf-clover-esque shape) but without confusing stops or false paths as in a maze. Labyrinths and their relationship to contemplative spirituality will be discussed later, in Chapter 5, but it is appropriate to also make the link here. One example is the Gothic-era pavement labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France, itself along one of the historic Camino de Santiago routes (and demarcated by the usual blue sign with golden scallop, an attribute of St. James the pilgrim). Daniel K. Connolly aptly notes the many modern-day tourists and pilgrims who seek out that particular circuit-walk for its authenticity and connection to the past. The stones have been worn smooth and shiny from countless knees, hands, and feet for hundreds of years, furthering the tangible sense of the presence of the past. Many modern pilgrims were probably made aware of the Chartres labyrinth through local copies (in churchyards, religious spaces, and parks) which have proliferated, in part, due to “the awareness of the benefits of measured, ambulant meditations.”44 Connolly gently posits the irony between the search for authenticity of the modern-day pilgrim and the perhaps little-known fact that “the labyrinth pavement there was itself a kind of copy, the motivation for which lay in the nostalgic longing for the High Middle Ages for the most authentic pilgrimage site for the Latin West—the holy city of Jerusalem.”45 The Chartres labyrinth, as well as Volker’s Camino, reflects the journey to Santiago and, by proxy, engenders the inherent link to the City of God, or imagined homeland, toward which all Christians proceed as “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). Like the labyrinth tradition, the Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, is another way for Catholics (and, increasingly, for members of many other denominations) to reflect on the events of the Passion using a visual aid in the form of tableaux, or even simple crosses, installed within the space of a church or outdoors. The practice of transposing the sites of Jerusalem with markers of some kind originated as early as the fifth century, by St. Petronius, Bishop of Bologna (who erected chapels representing important pilgrimage sites in Jerusalem at his home monastery).46 The more familiar “Stations of the Cross” with illustrated tableaux

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that we have today likely began to take form, outside the Holy Land, around the fifteenth century with notable examples in Cordova and Fribourg.47 This is relevant here in the sense that it is an example of a canonical pilgrimage practice where sites and scenes of one site are transferred to another via a “medial shift.”48 Volker has constructed his own “stations” along the way, in the form of simple birdfeeders that give some space for pause in ambulation and restful reflection. These are rooted in his practice of praying the Rosary when he walks (usually, this is done when there are no visitors, although on occasion he will pray with a companion). The cyclical journey of the backyard circuit reflects the equally cyclical words of the Glory Be which concludes the rosary—“as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end”: Walking while doing the rosary was my preferred way and that occurred even before building my trail. All along the rosary has been a large part of the project. For instance, the trail is .88 of a kilometer long and I can say one round of the prayer in one lap of the trail. It was a perfect fit. Then at some point I placed birdfeeders at approximately the place where I should have completed my Our Fathers, six of them. So, my rosary is integrated with my Camino. If I say it somewhere else I walk my trail in my mind and keep track of things that way, the two are one.49

The birdfeeders mark out the completion of a series of the Lord’s Prayer, where the devotee is reminded of “thy Kingdom come” and the pilgrimage metaphor of negotiating the earthly city as heaven is awaited “in joyful hope.” Most pilgrims who walk in the backyard know the trail as simply “Phil’s Camino,” but there are actually two trails named for “Mary” and “Joseph.” The “Mary” trail goes through the woods, but for inclement weather (when there’s a danger of falling branches) the “Joseph” trail bypasses the forest and weaves through the open countryside.50 Pilgrimage is an ongoing condition of those of resurrection faith, where Christians traverse an earthly city in hope of reaching, eventually, eternal life in the living city of God. Volker’s Camino works through the levels from overarching Christian metaphor, firmly rooted in scripture, to a Jerusalem pilgrimage, to a pilgrimage to a site associated with a companion and direct disciple of Jesus, to a continuation of that sacred journey in a patch of land on Vashon Island.51 Objects and things that are sacred, or believed to take on an imbued capacity, are an imperative part of the Camino Vashon experience and often assist in the feeling of temporal collapse or nearness to one’s own (past or future) Camino, in Spain or through the contemplative imagination. The celebratory food and drink

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at Volker’s table is inspired by the tapas along the Camino de Santiago, and these meals take place after many of his community walks. It is easy to really feel a sense of communitas and connection to the root of the route: That’s a lot of what we do here, re-enacting the Spanish Table. We walk and converse and then we sit around that table to rest and celebrate our time together. It’s a communion of souls meeting for a time to re-enact, to remember, to reinforce our memories of a special time, of a special community.52

The breaking of bread at tapas, as described here, has reflexive connections to the Eucharistic meal in the sharing, remembrance, and celebration. The table itself, so often laden with food and a place to sit and converse, also has its own story. Volker had built a picnic table with his daughter when she was nine years old (Figure 1.3). They had traveled together to pick out the Western Red Cedar planks and made a sturdy table with built-in benches, long enough for plenty of company at ten feet long and thirty inches high. After twenty-seven years of family dinners and three or so years of post-Camino tapas, the table was badly weathered and needed to be replaced. Embodying the essence of what I am describing here as a perceived “transfer of spirit” from thing to thing, Volker dug out the original plans for the table and built a new one with his son. He referred to it as a “relay partner” that could “take the baton”: Yea, the story of the tapas table, somehow not two tables but always one. Not old and new but one taking over for the other. Not just death and birth but a certain continuation. The idea of the tapas table with connectivity at its heart being one thing going on into the future.53

He revisited this idea later in 2018 when asked to repair a friend’s old table and acknowledged the history when faced with the task, writing: When approaching a project such as this I have to get to a place where I am in awe of the piece’s history: all the meals, all the Christmas presents wrapped, all the science projects completed, all the tears and the joys are all there in the burns and the scars and the glitter. How to clean it up and not disrupt this rich history? How to make way for the next act and still honor all those that came before?54

The backyard Camino itself, and all the stories, sorrows, and prayers that have been brought there, is becoming its own huge and heavily laden table, imbued with hope and history.

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Figure 1.3 Film still: the Volker family sharing tapas at the picnic table (Wiley, Rebecca, Phil, Ramon, Tesia, and Osian), Vashon Island. Phil’s Camino archives, 2016.

In terms of the material culture along the trail, Volker has also acknowledged the very earth that comprises the backyard path, and how it has “enriched our trail here”: [The pilgrims] come and the dust on their boots comes from other amazing and holy places to enrich our trail here . . . folks have even been to a place [in] Taiwan where Mother Mary appeared to a group of Buddhist monks, we have that dust too! Such a richness . . . Camino dust abounds, it is thick in the air like the tree pollen right now. The air seems visible right now. Yes, certainly, this could all be.55

This sentiment relates to a Catholic popular devotional practice which involves pressing a prayer card or ribbon to the reliquaries protecting the remains of the saint, or even (as Bede tells us) gathering the dust that accrued on the sacred container to make what is popularly called a third-class, or “contact” relic.56 The practice has roots in the ancient world and was encouraged in Patristic writing; Gregory, Eusebius, and Augustine all discuss third-class relics in the form of filings from St. Peter’s chains, oil, and flowers from the Holy Land, respectively. There is also surviving extratextual evidence of these practices including an arresting sixth-century “reliquary box” from Palestine or Syria (now in the Vatican’s Museo Sacro, Figure 1.4).57 It has a cover decorated with tempera and gold leaf on wood depicting scenes from the life of Christ. Inside are stones and bits of dirt from the Holy Land, each apparently relating to the

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Figure 1.4 Box containing stones and soil from sites associated with Jesus Christ, c. sixth century (Palestine), box: tempera and gold leaf on wood, Vatican, Museo Sacro Inv. 61883 a–b. Photo: © Vatican Museums.

story which took place at the places where they were collected. I want to focus on Volker’s idea of “Camino dust” here, but tertiary relics will be considered in the context of assemblage in the subsequent chapters.58 In this instance, Volker’s own feet had processed all the way down into the crypt of the Cathedral of Santiago where the relics of St. James are kept in a silver reliquary. He prayed and left a petition, and then trod all over the earth back home, bringing with them a bit of the sacred dust perhaps. The idea that “Camino dust abounds” also serves to further link the two Caminos through a physical transfer of earth from site to site, and reveals another example of the continuity of a traditional devotional practice. Artwork and the built environment, especially one imbued with so many souvenirs and so much holy dust, can be thought of as a temporal reminder of an imagined Holy Land where the logos is made visible and has potential to create liminal points of contact between the earthly, visible world of forms and that of the unseen. This idea has roots in the teachings of Augustine and is embedded within the tradition of Christian Neoplatonism.59 Volker would visualize the early Renaissance devotional paintings by the Dominican artist Fra

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Angelico and an image of a mid-fourteenth-century Assumption by Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci as he walked. It was a powerful way to bring to life the joyful, sorrowful, glorious, and luminous mysteries of the rosary. This is, in a sense, an imaginative parallel to the wayside crosses, Baroque polychromed shrines, and chapel paintings along the Camino de Santiago. The rhythm of his feet on the trail with the damp Northwest island earth yielding below, the art in his head, and the prayers in his heart were woven together, as he explained, “making everything stronger.”60 In one of our early correspondences, Volker sent me a photograph of an assemblage of three significant objects he had found while working in his corn patch: a heart-shaped rock, a compass, and a key-hole (see also his sketch, Figure 1.8b). He called it “a message” and “the centerpiece of our whole effort here; you have to find your way to opening your heart.”61 On any Camino, it is imperative to let go and be willing to open one’s heart to the possibilities that can occur; Pope Francis has taught that, “[w]alking in community, with friends, with those who love us: this helps us, it helps us to arrive precisely at the destination where we must arrive.”62 People seeking just this have already begun to travel to Vashon Island to walk in community with Volker: Everyone who has walked with me is in the logbooks. I bet there is somewhere between a hundred and two hundred easy over the last two years. They come for all sorts of reasons. Some have driven from as far as Portland and a group just flew in from Salt Lake. It is a pilgrimage for them to come here.63

Volker began with two laps every day that he was not at the hospital for appointments and eventually worked up to twelve; now he has regular hours for walking posted on a whiteboard by the stone pile so that friends and visitors can join him. When he walks with companions, he recounts that conversations range from very intimate to casual, but emphasizes that “the whole idea is to be present. If people are there, I am present to them.”64 In honor of this sentiment, the tapas table at the Veranda party was studded with an abundance of heart-shaped stones. Cycling back to an earlier point, for many, the backyard Camino is a reminder of their journey in Spain, but it is crucial to reiterate that it also stands on its own terms as generative community experience and pilgrimage destination in and of itself. John Endres, SJ, who had not walked the Camino in Spain but who was moved by the documentary Phil’s Camino and traveled to Vashon to walk with Volker, acknowledged the value of the localized pilgrimage. He wrote, after his

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visit, “it was clear how much Camino is part of everyday life . . . not necessarily the grand adventure of flying off to Spain to walk it. Here it is walking, walking day in and day out, praying, contemplating, being with others in gentle companionship—no matter what the weather is, or the news.”65 Another pilgrim recalled, On the Camino [in Spain] we walked with some for a minute, with others for the whole way. I was surprised how important even those momentary companions became to my journey. When we walk and [share] tapas here, whether on [the Vashon backyard] trail or through the virtual landscape of [Volker’s] blog, we are moved, changed by the conversations, the comments, the time together.66

Acknowledging these experiences, Volker now issues pilgrim passports, so everyone who visits Vashon goes home with a souvenir (Figure 1.5). When walking the Camino de Santiago (or now the Camino Ignaciano, certain pilgrimages in the UK, the Mission Trail in the USA, and so on), pilgrims are issued a little fold-out paper passport which they get stamped at the cathedrals, bars, and hostels that they encounter. The practice descends from the flat, stamped tin-and-lead souvenirs that medieval pilgrims would pick up and sew onto their hats or into their devotional prayer books. Volker’s are a simple one-page fold like a greeting card. The front says “Phil’s Camino at Raven Ranch” and there’s a spot for the pilgrim’s “nombre” and the “fecha” and “hora” of the walk. The middle section contains a pilgrim’s prayer “from the Codex Calixtinus, the twelfth-century guidebook to the Camino de Santiago” and a list of anonymous “Beatitudes of the Pilgrim.” These were copied from a scrap of paper that was handed to Volker by a silent religious sister who had momentarily paused while sweeping an otherwise empty chapel along the Camino in Spain.67

Figure 1.5 Backyard Camino passport. Collection of author.

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The back of the passport contains a hand-drawn map of the backyard with space for the “sello official del Camino de Felipe” (mine, as pictured, earned a rubber stamp with a scallop and the words “Phil’s Camino, Come Walk With Me”). For one pilgrim, the passport was one way that the graces of the Camino Vashon continued to be revealed: The spirit of Phil’s camino made our own journey a bit bigger, reminding us of the strangers around us who are also seeking to experience beauty, life, companionship, and meaning as they traverse through life. We were all given another recuerdo. Phil gave us a notecard reminiscent of the passports travelers have on the Camino de Santiago. Inside were listed the “Beatitudes of the Pilgrim.” The remainder of our road trip down the West Coast together, we would read one of the beatitudes as a blessing for our day together. It felt like a fortune for us each day, and kept the spirit alive for us! When we parted ways, the next day we would text each other the following Beatitude until we had finished. My favorite #2 “Blessed are you pilgrim . . . If what concerns you most is not to arrive, as to arrive with others” seems fitting for our journey of companionship together.68

Walking a pilgrimage route, with the churches and roadside chapels along the way, the arduous physical challenge of it all, and the spiritual stretching that occurs, can be an important catalyst for healing. There are certainly material reminders of memories, prayers, special intentions, and votive objects of thanksgiving which have been deposited along the backyard Camino. However, there are no figurative paintings or tableaux along the route, other than those carried in the imagination (Volker calls these “icons of the heart”). The created art object here, which generates a liminal channel to a tangible closeness with the divine, is the Camino itself; the circuitous path and metaphor for the Christian condition that leads from an island in the Pacific Northwest to a realm beyond.

Film as pilgrimage: a case study The critically acclaimed documentary film, Phil’s Camino, directed by Annie O’Neil (2016), followed Volker from the Vashon backyard, to Spain (where he was eventually able to travel), and back again (Figure 1.6).69 In the context of a discussion of paintings by Holbein and Burgkmair as “supplements to virtual pilgrimage,” Wood acknowledges that all pilgrimages are reenactments (of others’ pilgrimages and, perhaps implicitly, as a metaphor of the journey of life)

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and then posits that “[t]he point of interest is where the reenactment slips a gear—where there is a medial shift, a transfer of meaning from original building to replicated building to painted building.”70 Even though Wood is discussing a historical scenario where paintings were “psychologically involved in the whole enterprise of virtual pilgrimage,” the idea of this medial shift, or translation, or transfer is a compelling way to think of the film. There is a network of meaning connecting the Camino in Spain to the path that Volker forged in the backyard to the film, with mutual participation between media.71 The film has also been taken note of by the medical community with doctors in the fields of cancer rehabilitation and clinical oncology, who have posited its potential therapeutic benefits (that is, not just the process of walking—but also the process of viewing).72 The discussion is predicated on recent work in film theory which posits that film viewing is an embodied experience rather than a vicarious or illusory one. Vivian Sobchack argues that we must “alter the binary and bifurcated structures of the film experience suggested by previous formulations and instead, posit the film viewer’s lived body as a carnal ‘third term’ that grounds and mediates experience and language, subjective vision and objective vision—both differentiating them and unifying them in reversible (or charismatic) processes of perception and expression.”73 For the purposes of this chapter, this idea of experiencing a film through the body heightens the sense of extratemporal communitas and further collapses the boundaries between these various levels of pilgrimage, from Spain to the backyard to the cinema. A connection is forged with Volker, with the path he walks in Spain, with his community and the backyard, and the march of pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela from the time of the translation of his relics to today, and even those who will walk in the future. This final section engages transcendental phenomenology of film, iconography, and participant observation to posit that a pilgrimage experience is engendered through the embodied encounter of being immersed in the cinematic space of Phil’s Camino. The French film theorist and co-founder of Cahiers du cinema, André Bazin, has written discursively about the ability of a film to mediate an experience, hence allowing the viewer to enter into the cinematic space.74 This is compatible with Wood’s idea of the medial shift as we work through and collapse the levels from Camino de Santiago, to the backyard Camino, to the film, and back again. Vivian Sobchack has elaborated on the embodied experience of the viewer, acknowledging and emphasizing the perception of a film as “sensible” and immersive; “the film experience is a system of communication based on bodily perception as a vehicle of conscious

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Figure 1.6 Phil’s Camino film poster (2016). Phil’s Camino archives.

expression.”75 For O’Neil, the creation of the documentary was a pilgrimage, and it functions as one for the viewers.76 Marinda Chan, then a PhD student at the Graduate Theological Union, wrote the following reflection after she saw the film and attended a Q&A at which Volker was present. For her, the experience of viewing was linked to other contemplative pilgrimage experiences:

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Imaging Pilgrimage Phil’s spirituality of healing and curing is real . . . Phil has inspired so many people in his life. By watching his film and talking to him in person, I had a sense of touching the divine ascent of my life. It had a healing affect like what we discussed in the class, whether relics, icons or holy shrines are copies or not, the divine touch, now in our case, through a film, is how we encounter the divine. My encounter with Phil has led me into a divine space, like my various pilgrimage experiences, touching the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem, touching the stone wall of the Holy House of Loreto, touching the holy ground that Jesus prayed at before his agony in Gethsemane. I am very glad to meet my fellow pilgrim— Phil—in my life pilgrimage, our encounter is a healing experience in my own self transcended toward my ultimate and divine.77

Being enveloped in the cinematic space of Phil’s Camino, like walking in the backyard, is an embodied one, and for this pilgrim and many (including Rho, quoted in the opening of this chapter; see n.20), it has helped facilitate a shift in direction, or a transcendence of self. There was a screening of the feature-length version of Phil’s Camino at the Vashon Island cinema that was scheduled into the August 2019 Veranda activities. It was the cinema’s “big Apocalypse Now weekend” and it felt profound, somehow, to see the name of the film on the marquee along with that one, and the posters juxtaposed with each other. The historian in me was finding all sorts of connections with the idea of the apocalypse/end-of-the-world and the eschatological nature of the journey of the pilgrim toward a heavenly Jerusalem. Perhaps, though, an even more poignant link is that Apocalypse Now stars Martin Sheen, who also played the protagonist in The Way (2010, directed by his son Emilio Estevez). It was this film that had led, in part, to Volker’s desire to walk the Camino following his diagnosis. Sometime after he received this life-altering news, he had encountered the film, which tells the story of a father (Sheen) who receives news that his son (Estevez) died walking the Camino, just at the very beginning of the pilgrimage in the Pyrenees, where the weather is brutally unpredictable. The father must travel from his home in the States to France to identify his son’s body. After doing so, he decides to cremate the son and complete the journey in his memory, carrying a box containing his ashes for 500 miles and leaving handfuls of them along the way as he mourns, opens his heart, and ultimately transcends his former self. The “Veranda” screening in downtown Vashon was unusual in that there was a complete eclipse of cinematic space and reality, which added yet another dimension of extreme immediacy to what was an embodied experience

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(Figure 1.7). In film theory, the separation of reality and the virtual world is usually taken as a given, which has led to compelling contemplations on the ontological capacity of the image. As Steven Shaviro has noted, the “cinematic image, in its violent more-than-presence, is at the same time immediately an absence: a distance too great to allow for dialectical interchange.” In other words,

Figure 1.7 Vashon Island Cinema marquee for Apocalypse Now (1979) and Phil’s Camino (2016), August 2019. Photo: James Riches.

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the “virtual images” on the screen, usually, “do not correspond to anything actually present” but are still hugely affecting.78 In this case, however, the images not only corresponded to, but documented, bodies and things which were actually present. The local island community was interspersed with the pilgrims that Volker had assembled for the Veranda in a full theatre. The Q&A session following the film was jocular and personal and there were tears and laughter, especially since nearly everyone could see Volker with his trademark cap and bandana in one of the central rows of the cinema, next to his rehabilitation doctor, Zucker, who is interviewed in the film. The collide of cinematic space and reality was palpable, having just alighted from the Seattle ferry that opens the film the day before and, that morning, walking the backyard Camino. “Hey, that’s Phil!” said my then five-year old daughter who was sitting next to me. “Phil!” her two-year-old brother concurred, “and Phil’s Camino!” Another pilgrim commented on the peculiarity of the flow between film and actuality and from one embodied experience to the other, writing, “I’ve seen Phil on the big screen but seeing him here in his own space with visitors around, sharing food, wine and other delights almost makes me think this is a scene from the film. I soon realize this is real and this moment is so special!”79 The audiences that assemble for Phil’s Camino comprise a crowd that is perhaps especially open to communitas and the possibility of transformative experience. The film has been a catalyst for both. As O’Neil, who has now directed several other shortdocs that she has taken on the independent film circuit, describes: I have been to dozens of film festivals, but I cannot think of another film that brings a veritable entourage of people to enjoy the screening and everything before and after it. We are a motley bunch of pilgrims, Camino lovers, dreamers, seekers, Catholics, agnostics, cancer survivors and people who have stood next to someone dealing with cancer. We laugh together, we cry together, we walk and we talk. We learn. We open our hearts. We heal.80

In fact, to highlight an important point made here and earlier, the film has indeed been embraced by the medical community as having therapeutic benefits. Dr. Arash Asher, MD, Director of Cancer Survivorship & Rehabilitation at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at Cedars-Sinai, has recommended it to patients with advanced cancer.81 It has been screened at various clinical oncology meetings and conferences, including the Cutaneous Lymphoma Foundation in June of 2019 (where Volker and O’Neil were available

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for a Q&A session afterward). At the 2016 meeting of the American Congress for Rehabilitation Medicine, the film was screened as part of a session on “Cancer, Exercise, and Quality of Life.” The session aimed to highlight research on “the positive impact of exercise on functional health and QOL [quality of life] in the face of profound disability” and the role of “multidisciplinary, collaborative care in addressing common cancer and treatment-related impairments.” Zucker and Mary Radomski, PhD, OTR/L led a Q&A session following the screening “to explore cancer rehabilitation’s role in addressing the existential issues experienced by cancer survivors through enhancing functional health.”82 On another occasion I organized a screening of the film at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University and extended the invitation to the Berkeley community, putting up posters the preceding week at local cafés and bookstores. The larger of the two classrooms was filled beyond capacity with many people standing against the wall or sitting on the floor. Despite having the windows open on an autumn evening, the room quickly became hot and humid. A woman who had spotted one of the posters in town introduced herself after the Q&A. She had just returned from walking the Camino in Spain days before and described having some typical “reentry” issues—the feeling many pilgrims describe as mild depression or not quite knowing what to do with oneself after spending a month with one priority: to rise and walk in silence and conversation, following the scallop-shell trail markers and yellow arrows to Santiago de Compostela (or to the sea beyond). The woman looked around at the audience and said, “Wow, this really feels like an albergue!” referring to the hostels along the Camino route, where pilgrims can rest, eat, sleep, and tend to their blisters and sunburn. As Sobchack writes, there is a “common sensuous experience of the movies,” using the language of “carnal modality” to describe the ability, to touch and be touched by the substance and texture of images; to feel a visual atmosphere envelop us, to experience weight, suffocation, and the need for air; to take flight in kinetic exhilaration and freedom even as we are relatively bound to our theatre seats; to be knocked backward by a sound; to sometimes even smell and taste the world we see on screen.83

The woman who made the comment explained that she was referring not to just the hot (and at that point, slightly malodorous!) classroom, but the sense of community that developed in that classroom as we wept and laughed and traveled with Volker, the pilgrim—and O’Neil, the mostly invisible Virgilian guide behind the scenes.

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It is important to reiterate the timeline, or maybe more accurately, collision, of overlapping events that led to the creation of the backyard Camino and, subsequently, a documentary film. After Volker’s diagnosis, he started a daily practice of walking around his property and praying the Rosary; it was around the same time that he came across the film The Way. Looking back, he acknowledged this formative moment: [I] was taken with the idea of it, this pilgrimage thing. The idea that I could somehow do a pilgrimage right here where I was, in the condition that I was in, gelled for me. It could be said that it was a fantasy, a myth but whatever it was it proved incredibly helpful and vital for my overall health and well-being. It was part medical, part athletic, part historical, part religious, part spiritual and I would learn that it would connect me to a whole new world.84

In the winter of 2014 Volker saw another documentary film about the Camino de Santiago, Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago, directed by Lydia B. Smith. The film featured Annie O’Neil, the director of Phil’s Camino, as one of the six pilgrims whose stories were featured.85 Volker contacted O’Neil, who was working on a book at the time that is designed to fit into a pilgrim’s pocket called Everyday Camino with Annie (2014). Like the film, and like the backyard Camino, the point of the book is to guide the reader through what has been called a “pilgrimage in place” through reflections, meditations, and quotes. There are exactly forty entries, and O’Neil has acknowledged that the book can also function as a Lenten exercise, at one point emailing a section a day from Ash Wednesday to Easter. In one of the endorsements, Fr. Tom Hall, a retired US Navy Chaplain and Paulist priest who later became the spiritual advisor for Phil’s Camino, points out the “mystery of death and re-birth that Pilgrim Annie experiences on the way to Santiago de Compostela” and that the book comprises “her real journey, the journey of her soul.”86 The entry for Day 1 provides a sense of the pace and direct address: Congratulations—your journey has begun! It may be to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, or it may be to the end of this book. Either way, pilgrimage leads to yourself. Simply reading this page is the journey. Thinking the thoughts that you are thinking is the journey . . . This is the eve of your Camino, whether in Spain or the place you call home. The fact that we have this book to bring us together is an auspicious beginning!87

In this passage, there is a clear acknowledgment of the invocation of communitas (“we have this book to bring us together”). It is an invitation to a

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voyage, and fits into a long tradition of stationary or mental pilgrimage. St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), for example, called contemplation a “road” or “royal highway on which the pilgrim advanced straight to his celestial country.”88 Subsequently the Cistercians went on to build abbeys in swamps and wooded places, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and named after the natural resources surrounding the site. They farmed, carried on domestic tasks, and took part in mental pilgrimages through contemplative practice—what Boyle calls a “pilgrimage in stability” or what O’Neil and others have called a “pilgrimage in place.”89 Volker was inspired to send O’Neil a note on Facebook, back when there was a limit on how many lines could fit in the direct message. With one line left, he asked her to come walk with him in the backyard. This idea of having just “one line left” became a poignant metaphor for his own life, which he describes in a passionate interview in the documentary: “right now in my life that’s where it’s at. I’ve got like one more line. I’ve got to put it in there. I’ve got one more chance.”90 O’Neil traveled to Vashon Island while still working on the final version of her book. She was as inspired by Volker as he was by her. Subsequently, his story appears on the final page of Everyday Camino. “There really is no difference, in walking in Spain, on Vashon Island, or in your local park,” writes O’Neil.91 The sentiment is at the heart of these projects which seek not to just transfer the spirit from one place to another, but engender a transtemporal communitas—a feeling of being together with those who have walked before and those who will in the future. The shortdoc immediately engages the viewer as it opens with a beach sequence and the departure of the Vashon ferry, a visual connection from Puget Sound to the shores of Galicia where the remains of St. James are said to have washed up. For some, the Camino ends at Muxía, on the water. This sets the tone for several such cyclical moments where, as T. S. Eliot lyrically wrote in “Little Gidding,” in a sentiment that all pilgrims are familiar with: “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”92 As Volker explicitly states in the film, his pilgrimage does not end at Santiago, but rather starts there—resonant with the experiences of many pilgrims through the course of history. In the Middle Ages, the return journey was a time of recounting blessings and passing them along, and perhaps there are resonances with modern-day pilgrimages where “reentry” becomes a time of personal reflection. There are several more places where the idea of pilgrimage as metaphor and actual journey are evocatively juxtaposed, such as when Volker finishes the backyard Camino and his grandson is born. There is

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also a sequence of vignettes of everyday objects in and around Volker’s house and work shed, each serving to tell a fragment of his story. André Bazin’s broadly phenomenological approach to film theory (following Merleau-Ponty) privileged, first, the medium’s ability to realistically represent the world, which, as a documentary filmed in real time, certainly does.93 Bazin is a particularly compelling theorist to draw upon in relation to the documentary “capture” and “translation” of Phil’s Camino. His interest in cinematic realism actually has a theological impetus; for Bazin, who was himself a practicing Catholic, the “simple act of photographing the world, testifies to the miracle of God’s creation. It is sanctioned to do so precisely because it is an invention of science.”94 The image is not, by any means, a stagnant record; the viewer plays an integral role in interpretation and experience. “The screen reflects the ebb and flow of our imagination,” he writes, “which feeds on a reality for which it plans to substitute. That is to say, the tale is born of an experience that our imagination transcends.”95 For the viewer, the cinematic collage of “everyday objects” transposes the journey of life with walking the Camino. The camera pauses on a painting of a hammer, symbolizing the importance of building things throughout Volker’s life (his training in landscape architecture at art school and cabinetry business, taking the name of St. Joseph the Carpenter at confirmation, and, of course, blazing the Camino trail in the Vashon backyard). There is a spray of dried branches or leaves above the hammer reminiscent of palm fronds, carried by medieval pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, called “palmers” (and playfully referenced by Shakespeare in the lines from Romeo and Juliet, “For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, / And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss”).96 Christ is often portrayed entering Jerusalem through a sea of palm-bearing followers, reenacted by many churches to this day on Palm Sunday, during the Easter season. The hammer and branches connect the idea of building, and building the Camino, to ancient sacred journeys. In quick succession, the camera passes a clock and calendar, with their temporal resonances of limited, measured time in increments of hours in a day and in a year. Both take on a greater significance when juxtaposed with the subsequent frame: a red Radio Flyer wagon filling up with Pacific Northwest rain, rippling on the surface. It embodies nostalgia and a little bit of wistfulness—an object of childhood jaunts down the road, which, for some, are the earliest pilgrimage. The rain overflowing from the wagon could be seen as abundance in stillness, even while measured time marches forward. Later, when Volker’s wife Rebecca discusses her admission that there is no cure for cancer, a shot of the wagon is set against a vision of an empty

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clothesline. Dylan Thomas describes a similarly pastoral scene in Fern Hill, “honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns”—there are owls and “pebbles of the holy streams” as the “sabbath rang slowly”—but even in youth and even without a life-altering illness there is a pilgrim’s progress toward old age and death. As Thomas wrote, Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.97

Taken together as a cinematic assemblage, the images of the opening sequence are a reminder of transience, but also the gratitude and fullness that encompass Volker’s project. Living in the constant shadow of death but not being overcome or suffocated by this is part of Volker’s faith in the Resurrection. Toward the end of the documentary, Volker makes one of the few overtly religious points in the film, which links pilgrimage with faith in eternal life. To historicize this in terms of Christian iconography, in the Middle Ages, a proliferation of images of dancing skeletons, sometimes with hourglasses, were a visual acknowledgment of the idea that Volker articulated. Such images were called the Danse Macabre (Holbein created a famous series of these) and formed part of the medieval canon of allegorical literature. In fourteenth-century pilgrimage narratives like Langland’s Piers the Plowman, Death personified is one of the emblematic characters encountered by the good pilgrim—democratizing and unavoidable.98 After this opening sequence, a seabird flying creates a cinematic transition from the ferry to the hospital where Volker receives his chemotherapy treatments; another place of ends and beginnings, births and deaths. Volker’s daily blog often relates the view and the weather out the window of the treatment rooms, which sometimes look out over a vista including the spire of St. James Cathedral at 804 Ninth Avenue in Seattle: “St James Cathedral is just a few blocks away from the hospital and I got a window seat here so I can see it. Two guys in bright orange rain gear are crawling around on one of the two towers doing some kind of work. I prayed for their safety.”99 Both are dedicated to the apostle and son of Zebedee (parish records for the Seattle parish indicate the celebration of his feast on 25 July); it is a further point of the interlinking of Spain and Seattle. Volker’s own ink drawings are animated at a couple of junctures throughout the film (Figure 1.8). For example, his map is overlaid on an aerial shot of the Camino (Figure 1.9). This points to the medieval tradition of mapping

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Figure 1.8 Phil Volker, drawing of pilgrim (left) and other sketches (right), ink on paper, c. 2013.

Figure 1.9 Film still: Volker’s Camino map overlaid on aerial shot of backyard Camino. Phil’s Camino (2016) archive.

pilgrimages into manuscripts or labyrinths. Earlier, I mentioned the example of the Dominican Felix Fabri. Volker’s maps are a reminder that the film viewer is also a pilgrim, able to “enter into these images of wonder” (to paraphrase Blake)— in this case, into the filmic space, where they are invited to walk with him. In the clip of Volker praying the Rosary, we hear part of the Apostles Creed—“suffered, died, and was buried”—linking us back to the Passion narrative and the palms above the hammer painting. Like the methods of Ignatian contemplation explored in the final chapter, for Volker, the praying itself becomes an embodied experience. He remarks on a blog entry from 2017 that,

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[a]s the days of the week go by and I say my rosary I’ve noticed that I have the easiest time remembering the sorrowful part where Christ [carries] the cross and the hardest time with the luminous part where Christ is Transfigured. Thinking on that I realized that I have carried an endless amount of wooden timbers on my back in my day as a carpenter.100

Just as Volker “puts on Christ Jesus” as a “paradigmatic mask”101 through imagining the Passion in an embodied way, the viewer travels through the film as an abstracted Stations of the Cross with its themes of death, suffering, rebirth, and eschatological hope. Continuing along chronologically, Volker walks from the Vashon backyard right into Spain, through a series of arresting filmic frames with a shifting background of verdant rain-drenched Pacific Northwest pine forests into a sun-drenched scene of stucco, rooftops, and, eventually, a piazza with spinning papier-mâché puppets (Plate 3). The music changes, too, to a festive and traditional Spanish folk song. Speaking of the awareness of our “sensate bodies” during a cinematic experience, it is a moment that almost invariably leads to audience clapping.102 Suddenly everything is bigger, brighter, and deeper— both in terms of the scenery in which he is enmeshed as he walks through the landscape and the physical pain and kaleidoscope of emotions that are endured. In the Wizard of Oz, the black-and-white world is what Dorothy returns to in the end, although her perceptions have been forever shifted and changed, and that is, in effect, what happens to Volker. There are clues that link back to Vashon Island, just like the Technicolor reminders of Kansas that Dorothy encounters while in Oz (for example, in the characters of the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Lion—who are all farmhands back home). In the film, Volker verbalizes the fact that things are intensified while on Camino. This is compatible with what Victor and Edith Turner have said about pilgrimage as liminoid phenomenon: when on a sacred journey, “images strike [the pilgrim], in these novel circumstances, as perhaps they have never done before, even though he may have seen very similar objects in his parish church almost every day of his life. The innocence of the eye is the whole point here, the ‘cleansing of the doors of perception’.”103 We are privy to this paradigm shift through visual markers throughout the course of the “Spain” section of the shortdoc. The audience encounters two horses near the cornfield in Volker’s Vashon backyard; in Spain he is shown communing with shining white steeds. The eagle-filled sky that moves him to tears in Spain reminds viewers of the lone seabird that guides the transition from ferry terminal to hospital. The vibrant Vashon sunflowers look

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modest once the viewer encounters the field of colossal ones along the Spanish Camino. Volker also attends Mass while in Spain and is shown collapsing at the moment of Epiclesis (“calling upon” in Greek) in which the presider implores the Holy Spirit to hallow the gifts of wine and bread that will become the sacramental blood and body of Christ. Like all moments in the film, it is an unscripted scene, filmed in real time (in fact, the camera is knocked toward the ceiling and the viewer is suddenly staring at the vaulting before it is righted). Volker explains that he was probably dehydrated, but later reflected in his journal that the woman who caught him during the collapse was called Gracie, and that he quite literally fell into the arms of Grace.104 The scene evokes a visceral response to Volker’s sudden vulnerability. Sobchack emphasizes the relationship between viewer and film, which “is co-constituted as a series of mediated exchanges between our bodies.”105 Some films not only portray, but have the potential to facilitate an actual embodied experience; a “sensual relationship between our lived bodies and the visions and sounds expressed by the screen.”106 The context of the Mass and the embodied experience of the viewer work to collapse the boundaries of cinematic space. The themes of being cared for by community, the inevitability of bodily frailty, and how close one is to death at every single second take place in real time and on the screen. A dialogue later between Volker and his companion Kelly further underscores this, and the Christian belief in life everlasting; they remark that the Camino seems to go on forever and then realize that they actually have forever. It is a realization that the overarching point of the Camino experience was, for them, about eternal life. The camera cuts to one of the birdfeeders on Camino Vashon, where, as described earlier, Volker pauses on his rosary walks to say the Lord’s Prayer. The cyclical nature of the pilgrimage of life and its iteration through the at once symbolic and embodied experience of walking are encapsulated in the idea of divine presence on “earth as it is in heaven,” as reflected in the words of the prayer, as well as the “translation” of sacred space from one Camino to another.

Conclusion—ends and beginnings . . . The Vashon path winds through a forest and over a riverbed and feels “very Camino,” as O’Neil put it. But she and Volker, both seasoned Camino de Santiago pilgrims, understand that it is not a replica but a continuation of an experience

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that creates, in essence, a sense of what Pullan described as “paradigmatic memory,” linking it not to just Spain but to the Christian condition of hopeful walking and waiting. It is easy to imagine Volker, as he processes along the beaten path on his island trail, as a welcome companion along some route in Spain with his pilgrim-attire of bandana, boots, and fleece-pullover. He says, I don’t know if any of [the backyard pilgrims] think about walking the 909 laps that it takes to walk “across” Spain but we have good imaginations. We can easily enjoy each other’s company and work on our inner Caminos as we walk. And it doesn’t take much for me to flash back to any old place along the Camino Francés and probably that is true for anyone who has experienced it.107

The body (in different states of health and ableness), by circumambulating the short route, allows the pilgrim’s “good imagination” (pace Volker) to be activated. The film, I argue here, through the virtue of “medial shift,” translates the path through the phenomenological capacity of light and shadow, retaining the spirit of the prototype and allowing for an embodied experience. For some this means a return to the memories of the Camino de Santiago and moments of pain and healing, grace, or transcendence of self. For others, the walk is a symbol of hope and anticipation of a future journey. In all cases, the Camino exists in the present moment—the corn sparkles and changes with the season, a monkish chorus of pollinating bees buzz around the flowers, the horse troughs (actually old bathtubs) fill with rain, the forest breathes. The Camino stretches back into the distant past and future through its archetypal symbolic form of a looping road with an end that is also a beginning, mapping the cycle of life, death, and resurrection.

Notes 1 I am grateful to Phil Volker and my colleagues at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, especially Deborah Ross, Gina Hens-Piazza, Paul Janowiak, SJ, and John Endres, SJ for their judicious comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. 2 See Figure 1.1. 3 The island now known as Vashon (in the Puget Sound region) was home to thousands of Indigenous people whose lives were destroyed within twenty years of the arrival of the first white settlers. Because of this destruction of lives, place-names, land, and collective memory, much information has been lost. Lucy Gerand, a Puyallup woman who lived in the region in the early 1800s, gave a public account of

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4 5 6

7 8

9 10

11 12 13

14 15 16

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Imaging Pilgrimage life before the settlement which was the basis of a 2014 exhibition. “The Sxwobabc, a band of what’s now known as the Puyallup tribe, thrived on the natural resources of the area and lived . . . a highly sustainable life on the island”: see: https://www. vashonbeachcomber.com/news/new-exhibit-delves-into-vashons-native-americanpast/ At the time of this writing, Volker is exploring ways to honor this deeper layer of the history of the land he calls home, and on which he mapped the Camino pilgrimage route. Joyce Cox, BVM, “Phil’s Camino: A Journey of Healing,” Salt, Winter (2017) and Kevin Birnbaum, “The Way of a Pilgrim,” Northwest Catholic Journal (February 27, 2015). Cox, “Phil’s Camino,” 10. D. Dyas “To Be a Pilgrim: Tactile Piety, Virtual Pilgrimage and the Experience of Place in Christian Pilgrimage,” in J. Robinson, L. de Beer, and A. Harnden (eds.), Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period (London: British Museum, 2014), 1. See Introduction, and p. 11 n. 3, 4, 5. D. Dyas, Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature, 700-1500 (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), 245–6. See also Philip Edwards, Pilgrimage and Literary Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 8. S. Coleman and J. Elsner, Pilgrimage: Past and Present in the World Religions (Cambridge, MAs: Harvard University Press, 1995), 6. W. Pullan, “ ‘Intermingled Until the End of Time’: Ambiguity as a Central Condition of Early Christian Pilgrimage,” in J. Elsner and I. Rutherford (eds.), Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 408–9. C. S. Wood, “Votive Scenario,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 59–60 (2011), 206–27. Nancy, Vashon Island, in email correspondence with author, October 1, 2016. I borrow from the Thomist notion, applicable here, that “artistic creation does not copy God’s creation, it continues it.” See, for example, J. Maritain, “Art and Scholasticism,” in G. E. Thiessen, Theological Aesthetics: A Reader (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 327. Volker in an interview with the author, October 11, 2015. Kelly Burke, email correspondence with author, October 7, 2016. W. Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction [1936]” in his Illuminations, ed. H. Arendt and tr. H. Zorn (London: Random House, 1999), as cited in J. Garnett and G. Rosser, Spectacular Miracles: Transforming Images in Italy from the Renaissance to the Present (London: Reaktion, 2013), 195. Kathryn Barush, “The Root of the Route: Phil’s Camino Project and the Tradition of Catholic Surrogate Pilgrimage,” Practical Matters Journal, 9 (2016). I am grateful to the editors for allowing me to rework and expand the material for this chapter.

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18 Volker, Caminoheads blog, December 29, 2015. 19 L. A. Karst, “A New Creation: Translating Lourdes in America,” Liturgy, 32/3 (2017), 31. See also M. de Certeau, The Writing of History, tr. T. Conley (New York: Colombia University Press, 1988). 20 Rho, comment on Volker’s blog, March 5, 2018. 21 David Greenhood, Mapping (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 42. 22 Volker, Caminoheads blog, August 22, 2016, August 27, 2017 and August 28, 2017. At the time of the Veranda party, the daily diary that Volker maintains as a blog had apparently reached twice the length of Cervantes’s Don Quixote and then some. It is an almanac of ruminations on life, on farming, seasons, and harvest, the weather, cancer, and Catholicism. Each entry is accompanied by an image, and the diary as a whole can be thought of as a literary Camino in and of itself. 23 Volker in an interview with the author, March 15, 2015. 24 Volker, Caminoheads blog, August 31, 2015. 25 Volker, Caminoheads blog, May 3, 2018. 26 See Yohana Junker, “Unsettling the Landscape: Representation, Appropriation, and Indigenous Aesthetics in the Land Art of the American Southwest” for a critique of Land Art, including James Turrell’s Roden Crater in Northern Arizona, PhD Thesis, Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley, 2019). In her important book Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), Jane Bennett revisits older theories of vitalism to locate new kinds of agency in non-human matter and bodies. In this book, the phrase is employed to signal instances where living, sacred, and imbued objects take on an energy of their own beyond that which is perceived. 27 See n. 3, above. 28 Esther Hobbs, Caminoheads blog, April 14, 2019. 29 Bruno Latour, “ ‘Thou Shall Not Freeze-Frame’ or How Not to Misunderstand the Science and Religion Debate,” in J. D. Proctor, ed., Science, Religion, and the Human Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 45. Similar themes of (re) presentation are explored in a number of Latour’s essays. See also Latour and Adam Lowe, “The Migration of the Aura or How to Explore the Original Through its Facsimiles” in T. Bartscherer and R. Coover (eds.), Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), and Latour, “How to be Iconophilic in Art, Science and Religion” in C. A. Jones and P. Galison (eds.), Picturing Science, Producing Art (London: Routledge, 1998), 418–40. 30 Latour contends that religious images “are not at all about reference and access . . . [t]hey do something utterly different, they re-present, in the other sense of the expression, what these [Biblical, for example] stories and scenes really meant— meanings that had been lost by those who read then, but which can be re-understood once again, because of the picture” in “How to be Iconophilic,” 432.

52 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46

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Imaging Pilgrimage Cox, “Phil’s Camino,” 10. Volker, Caminoheads blog, September 28, 2016. Volker, Caminoheads blog, May 23, 2019. I. Yalom, “Religion and Psychiatry,” American Journal of Psychotherapy, 56/3 (2002), 302–16. See also Conclusion. V. Turner and E. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (3rd edn., New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 10, 11. See the Threshold Choir website: https://www.thresholdchoir.org J. Brierley, A Pilgrim’s Guide to the Camino de Santiago (Camino Francés): St. Jean—Roncesvalles—Santiago (Forres: Camino Guides, 2019), 210. Volker, Caminoheads blog, September 2, 2015. Volker in a correspondence with the author, May 4, 2016. Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 13; see also p. 56, n. 101. See also Chapter 5. L. Artress, Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice (New York: Riverhead, 2006), xii. Volker, Caminoheads blog, September 29, 2019. The idea is also mentioned on May 8, 2016, July 3, 2017, and March 13, 2018. D. K. Connolly, “At the Center of the World: The Labyrinth Pavement at Chartres Cathedral,” in S. Blick and R. Tekippe (eds.), Art and Architecture of Late Medieval Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and the British Isles (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 285–6. Ibid., 286. G. C. Alston, “Way of the Cross,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 15 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912). Available online: http://www.newadvent.org/ cathen/15569a.htm (accessed December 12, 2015). I am grateful to Gina Hens-Piazza for pointing out that up until Pope Clement XII fixed the number at fourteen, there had been thirty-seven sites in Jerusalem, beginning at the Mount of Olives, and during the eighteenth century Jesuits and Passionists incorporated the fourteen stations as part of their missions and retreats. See also Alston, “Way of the Cross.” Indulgences became attached to Holy Land pilgrimages, but Innocent XI realized that comparatively few would be able to undertake the journey so granted the Franciscans the rite to construct Stations in their churches in 1686, “declaring that all the indulgences that had ever been given for devoutly visiting the actual scenes of Christ’s Passion, could thenceforth be gained by Franciscans and all others affiliated to their order if they made the Way of the Cross in their own churches in the accustomed manner.” Innocent XII went on, in 1694, to support this, and subsequently Benedict XIII extended the privilege “to all the faithful.” Alston, “Way of the Cross.” Volker in an interview with the author, December 9, 2015.

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50 Volker, Caminoheads blog, September 1, 2015. 51 See, for example, Genesis 12:1, where Abraham leaves his home and family and goes into the wilderness; the Emmaus narrative in Luke 24; 1 Peter 2:11 where Christians are beseeched as “strangers and pilgrims,” and Hebrews 11:13 where the Christian condition is described as that of “pilgrims and strangers on earth.” There are several references to the “eschatological nature of the pilgrim church and its union with the church in heaven” in Lumen Gentium, see Ch. VII (passim) and also Ch. I: “On earth, still as pilgrims in a strange land, tracing in trial and in oppression the paths He trod, we are made one with His sufferings like the body is one with the Head, suffering with Him, that with Him we may be glorified,” Paul VI, “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium,” November 21, 1964. 52 Volker, Caminoheads blog, January 1, 2018. 53 Volker, Caminoheads blog, August 10, 2016. 54 Volker, Caminoheads blog, December 10, 2018. 55 Volker, Caminoheads blog, March 12 and April 20, 2018. Another entry (October 15, 2014) reads: And there is no denying that the ultimate way or The Way is following the path that Jesus has taught us. That is the twelve-hundred-year-old draw to that trail. That is the reason why the whole thing is so saturated with the Holy Spirit’s magic dust. You can’t go ten feet on the Camino without some getting on you. And the pilgrim walking next to you is dusted with it. And then a whole group of you walking together gets covered with it and it starts working on you and them. And the whole trail is covered with it. If you could see it, it probably is drifted up like snow in places as the wind blows it. 56 See, for example, Bedae, Hist. Eccl. lib. iv, C. iii: “. . . sometimes [tombs of the saints] arose as tiny Minster-like buildings, overshadowing the silver or the stone case which held the saints’ relics, and allowing, through a hole or window in the side, those who might like, to stretch forth their hands and gather the dust which lay upon the coffin lid,” 353–4 and n.19 in Daniel Rock, The Church of Our Fathers, as Seen in St Osmund’s Rite for the Cathedral of Salisbury . . . (London: Dolman, 1852). For a discussion of medieval contact relics, see Introduction, n.10, and also Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013). 57 The box was recently displayed in the exhibition Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum, and the British Museum (Catalogue 37, Figure 13). For the catalogue, see M. Bagnoli, H. A. Klein, C. G. Mann, and J. Robinson (eds.), Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Walters Art Museum, 2010).

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58 See Introduction, n.10 and the index entry for “relics”. 59 For an article which explores this concept through the lens of Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling, see E. D. Dotson, “An Augustinian Interpretation of Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling, Parts I and II,” The Art Bulletin, 61/2; 61/3 (1979). 60 Volker in an interview with the author, March 15, 2015. 61 Volker in a correspondence with the author, March 31, 2015. 62 Francis, transcribed Q&A following his “Address . . . to the Students of the Jesuit Schools of Italy and Albania,” June 7, 2013. 63 Volker in an interview with the author, December 9, 2015. 64 Volker in a correspondence with the author, May 4, 2015. 65 John Endres, SJ, Berkeley, in a correspondence with the author, November 25, 2017. 66 Catherine, Caminoheads blog, February 22, 2018. 67 The Beatitudes of the Pilgrim are as follows (and there are several months of blog entries on Caminoheads that are devoted to unpacking each one): 1 Blessed are you pilgrim, if you discover that the Camino opens your eyes to what is not seen. 2 Blessed are you pilgrim, if what concerns you most is not to arrive, as to arrive with others. 3 Blessed are you pilgrim, when you contemplate the Camino and you discover it is full of names and dawns. 4 Blessed are you pilgrim, because you have discovered that the authentic Camino begins when it is completed. 5 Blessed are you pilgrim, if your knapsack is emptying of things and your heart does not know where to hang up so many feelings and emotions. 6 Blessed are you pilgrim, if you discover that one step back to help another is more valuable than a hundred forward without seeing what is at your side. 7 Blessed are you pilgrim, when you don’t have words to give thanks for everything that surprises you at every twist and turn of the way. 8 Blessed are you pilgrim, if you search for the truth and make of the Camino a life and of your life a “way,” in search of the one who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. 9 Blessed are you pilgrim if on the way you meet yourself and gift yourself with time, without rushing, so as not to disregard the image in your heart. 10 Blessed are you pilgrim, if you discover that the Camino holds a lot of silence; and the silence of prayer; and the prayer of meeting with God who is waiting for you. 68 Catherine Holcombe, Berkeley, CA, March 12, 2019 in a correspondence with the author. 69 The film was released in 2016 as a 26-minute “shortdoc” and later in a feature-length version, So Far So Good. Phil’s Camino was shown at twenty-five festivals and as of October 2019 has won twenty awards including Jury Finalist at SXSW International

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Festival; First Prize Humanitarian Award at Flickers Rhode Island Film Festival; Best Short Documentary at Middlebury New Filmmakers Festival; and Special Jury Short Film at deadCenter Film Festival. For more information, see https://www. philscamino.com. C. Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 339. See Chapters 2 and 3, which discuss the possibility of a photograph to become a third-class relic by virtue of touch; perhaps there is a similar transfer, or translation, from site to site to film. See also “Toward a Conclusion . . .,” which cites the recent “fMRI Study Measuring Analgesia Enhanced by Religion as a Belief System” undertaken by a team of researchers in the fields of medicine, theology, and ethics from a number of institutions. See: K. Wiech, M. Farias, G. Kahane, N. Shackel, W. Tiede, and I. Tracey, Pain, 139/2 (2009), 467–7. V. Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), 60. See A. Kuhn and G. Westwell, “Phenomenology and Film” in their Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Available online: https:// www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199587261.001.0001/acref9780199587261-e-0525 (accessed August 20, 2019). V. Sobchack, The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 9. Annie O’Neil in a correspondence with author (August 30, 2019): Thinking of the filmmaking process like pilgrimage got me through the tough parts, the times when I was sure I had come as far as I could and would have to give up. Knowing that all I really had to do was go to sleep and see how things would look in the morning, a technique I perfected on the Camino, really helped. Letting others help me along the way really helped. Being sure to be grateful for absolutely everything is probably the final piece that allowed this film to be born.

77 Marinda Chan, Macau and Berkeley, December 12, 2017. 78 S. Shaviro, The Cinematic Body (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 44.5–6. 79 Nanciann, Lake Forest, CA, March 16, 2019. 80 O’Neil, correspondence with author, August 30, 2019. 81 Ibid. 82 Schedule of the 2016 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Available online: https://web.archive.org/web/20180220005910/https://acrm.org/ meetings/2016-annual-conference/cancer-content/ (accessed September 3, 2019).

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Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts, 65. Volker, Caminoheads blog, January 8, 2019. See: https://caminodocumentary.org/. Fr. Tom Hall, back cover endorsement, Everyday Camino with Annie (self-published, 2014). 87 A. O’Neil, Everyday Camino with Annie (self-published, 2014), Day 1, np. 88 M. O’R. Boyle, Divine Domesticity: Augustine of Thagaste to Teresa of Avila (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 72. 89 Ibid., 70–2. 90 Volker in an interview in Phil’s Camino. 91 O’Neil, Everyday Camino with Annie, Day 40. 92 T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” in Four Quartets (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1943), 58. 93 See Kuhn and Westwell, Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies, “Phenomenology and Film” (see n.108). 94 B. Cardullo, “Defining the Real: The Film Theory and Criticism of André Bazin,” in A. Bazin, André Bazin and Italian Neorealism, ed. B. Cardullo (London: Continuum, 2011), 4. 95 A. Bazin, What Is Cinema? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), Vol. 1, 48. 96 W. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 1 Scene 5. 97 Dylan Thomas, “Fern Hill [1945],” The Poems of Dylan Thomas (New York: New Directions, 1971), 178–80. 98 K. Barush, “Visions of Mortality,” Apollo, 177/605 (2013), 56–62. 99 Volker, Caminoheads blog, February 15, 2017. 100 Volker, Caminoheads blog, February 13, 2017. 101 As in the Roman Rite Eucharistic prayer (II, for various needs): “And so, with the Angels and Saints, we, too, sing the hymn of your glory, as without end we acclaim: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest,” Catholic Church, Roman Missal (3rd edn., Totowa, NJ: Catholic Book Publishing Corp., 2011), 631–2. See also Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 11. 102 Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts, 55. 103 Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 11. 104 “Gracie was next to me in the film where I pass out in church and she prevented me from injuring myself on the stone floor . . . friends say that power was the Holy Ghost getting my attention . . . falling into the arms of Grace. God’s playpen, right?” Volker, Caminoheads blog, May 17, 2017. 105 V. Sobchack, “Embodying Transcendence: On the Literal, the Material, and the Cinematic Sublime,” Material Religion, 4/2 (2008), 194–203 (original emphasis). 106 Ibid., 198, original emphasis. 107 Volker in an interview with the author, December 9, 2015.

2

South Africa → Lourdes Souvenirs as Sites

The first pilgrimage that I can remember experiencing in detail was about two miles in length—from my grandparents’ house in Ridgewood Village to Our Lady of Victory National Shrine and Basilica, in Lackawanna, New York (an industrial suburb of Buffalo). I was a petite five-year-old, small and wiry. My grandfather would hold my tiny hand in his large, rough one and together we would process, slowly and deliberately, past the Midas tire shop, the five-anddime stores, the cemetery gates. He was an inventor and watch-repairer and would pause every so often to pick up a washer or gear from the road in case it would be of use in one of his projects. I remember so clearly his shock of white hair, loupe placed firmly in his eye socket and ballpoint pens in checkered pocket, leaning over and replacing a battery in a watch or fixing a link on bracelet, the smell of Barbasol shaving cream and Ivory soap. Thinking back, these (and maybe a bit of hay from the Christmas creche) were our pilgrimage badges and souvenirs, collected along the Ridge Road Camino. He told me stories of the Second World War and the places in France that he had visited—the popular music (Edith Piaf singing Ma vie en rose) and the great cathedrals, including Notre-Dame de Paris where he was confirmed. Once we arrived at the Basilica, I couldn’t help but to touch the smooth, cold marble surfaces. As a child, I marveled at those beautiful and terrifying life-sized angels who held out great stone scallops of holy water. We always lit a candle to extend our prayers a little longer. I was allowed to drop a coin into the slot, choose the candle, and place it on the stand, and my grandfather usually made sure we left one burning at the reconstruction of the grotto at Lourdes, France, situated in the nave of the Basilica (Plate 2). I was thirty-two years old when I finally had the opportunity to visit the actual site that the grotto was modeled after. I had traveled to the town of Lourdes, nestled in the foothills of the Pyrenees in France, pregnant with my first 57

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child—a daughter who I call the “littlest pilgrim,” and on that trip we would eventually journey all the way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain (Figure 2.1). Over the course of several months in 1858, Bernadette Soubirous witnessed an apparition in the grotto that she would come to understand was the Virgin Mary. At the apparition’s bidding, she dug with her hands revealing a miraculous spring. The site is still visited by an estimated six million pilgrims a year. When it was finally my turn, I took a draught of the cold, mineral-tasting water and waited in the queue of pilgrims processing toward the grotto with great anticipation. Much to my surprise, when I arrived inside, I felt as though I was back in Lackawanna—a reverse medial shift.1 The tactility of the smooth, well-worn rock, touched by so many pilgrims, transported me immediately to the smaller grotto at Our Lady of Victory, holding my grandfather’s rough and strong hand—presence, communitas, embodiment, and a visit from the beloved dead. Perhaps because of these childhood pilgrimages to the grotto reconstruction, Bernadette’s story was so visceral, detailed, and relatable that I clearly remember being transported to Massabielle as a child. The cinderblock church-basement walls and innocuous Noah’s Ark murals of the catechism classroom would fall away and there I was with Bernadette, staring together with her at a beautiful lady with roses on her feet. With a maternal grandmother named after Bernadette and grandfather Marian (it is true that my pilgrim grandpa was named for the Virgin Mary), her story seemed somehow intertwined with my own. The narrative in the Basilica grotto reconstruction is dramatized as a mise-en-scène, with the inclusion of a statue meant to depict Bernadette’s vision of the Virgin Mary who, in turn, imagines the cathedral that she bids Bernadette to build. The sculptures invite participation from the viewer, who becomes part of the unfolding drama. This chapter places the work of South African artist Hettienne Grobler (Sri BhaktimayiMa), who creates shadowboxes of assemblages of souvenirs collected from Lourdes, in dialogue with medieval art which is rooted in the same impulses of memory, imagination, and devotion. In addition to Marian imagery, Grobler also draws from Bhakti theology and, widening the aperture, her work forms an important case study to show that art that engages two or more traditions can be used as a window into a dialogical approach to comparative religion. I contend that the shadowboxes function in much the same way as the to-scale or miniaturized reconstructions of sacred sites the world over—both the Lourdes grotto and, as we will see toward the end of the chapter, Vrindavan forest in

South Africa → Lourdes : Souvenirs as Sites

Figure 2.1 Lourdes grotto at night, c. 2013. Photo: James Riches.

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western Uttar Pradesh, India, reconstructed at the Govardhan Eco Village. McDannell has written in detail about the reconstructed grottoes that cropped up in the USA in the nineteenth century, concluding that “Religion replication is a critical aspect of Catholic culture.”2 As in the other case studies examined throughout this book, a continuity rather than rupture with tradition is emphasized as the perceived transfer of spirit from site to representation is traced from the Middle Ages through to the contemporary, devotional artwork. Material culture has clearly impelled and furthered popular piety, belief, and Marian devotion at Lourdes and beyond. The aim here is to demonstrate the continued importance of the agency of objects like pilgrimage badges and souvenirs and their ability to engender an embodied experience as “symbol vehicles” connected to a specific site, and to take seriously their believed apotropaic capacities.3 As the Turners emphasize, the belief in these “tactile transmissions of grace” should not be categorized as “contagious magic” but rather seen through the lens of the theology of the incarnation—God became matter, after all.4 From the standpoint of medieval popular belief, FosterCampbell has written about lead and tin pilgrimage badges that were collected as souvenirs from sacred locations, worn by pilgrims to protect them from harm, and later sewn on to the pages of illuminated devotional books (see Figure I.1). She describes the function of these as an “aid for personal devotion beyond the temporal and physical experience of a pilgrimage journey— facilitated mental or virtual pilgrimage for book owner, through memory or imagination.”5 Placing Grobler’s assemblages of souvenirs in the context of badges sewn onto devotional books in the European Middle Ages—and the grotto reconstructions of the modern era—demonstrates a continuation of traditional practices of popular piety. In both cases, the souvenirs and imaged landscapes link to the past but also to an imagined future. As contested as the fluorescently lit shops around Lourdes have been (often disparagingly called “Catholic Disneyland”), they are part of a legacy which stretches back to the heyday of pilgrimages in the European Middle Ages—the souvenirs on the psalters discussed by Foster-Campbell came from a similarly commercial marketplace. Given that the Lourdes pilgrimage was borne of a nineteenthcentury apparition, it is in this and other ways perhaps more medieval in feeling than the Camino to Santiago de Compostela. The destination, in this case, is paramount, with so many sick pilgrims being flown directly to the town, their journeys taking the shape of candle-lit processions in communitas, chanting an ancient Pyrenean hymn with Marian lyrics, circumambulating the liturgical

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spaces, and bringing back a souvenir for either mnemonic purposes or to bring comfort and healing to others in need, or both.

How and why an apparition was first “made material” The image of Our Lady of Lourdes that appears in countless grotto reconstructions and in the form of tiny, ubiquitous statues and medals, is based on a statue that was commissioned during Bernadette’s lifetime (Figure 2.2). It is an important symbol-vehicle that links the original place where Bernadette had her sacred encounter to myriad representations in the form of built environments, artworks, and souvenirs.6 Although only loosely based on her description of the vision, the project was a devotional one for the artist, Joseph-Hugues Fabisch (1812–86). Because all of this happened in the mid-nineteenth century, there are extant records and accounts that provide a holistic picture of the context of the sculpture commission, its relationship to Bernadette’s description of the apparition, and how the image has been used in an anagogic capacity—that is, to bring a sense of closeness to the divine. Based on its omnipresence in reconstructions of the grotto, it is clear that it has become part of the landscape in the cultural, devotional, and architectural imagination. Before we can understand the myriad versions and the significance they hold, including Grobler’s, it is important to turn first to the story of Bernadette’s apparition and the commissioning of Fabisch’s image. On a frigid Thursday in February of 1858, Bernadette Soubirous encountered an apparition in human form that later revealed itself to be the Virgin Mary as “the Immaculate Conception.” She was fourteen at the time, but small for her age after a lifetime of poor respiratory health and probably malnourishment due to poverty. The hagiographical accounts tell us that one day while gathering wood, she asked her companions if they wanted to see where the water from the mill joined the river and, together, they followed the canal, eventually finding themselves before a natural grotto hewn into the rock. Bernadette was removing her stockings to wade across the water when she heard a noise like wind, but noticed the trees were still. Looking at the grotto, she saw a vision of a beautiful figure clothed in white.7 Bernadette would go on to see this apparition eighteen times; on one occasion she ate grass at the vision’s bidding, as penance, and another time she uncovered and drank from the spring which would become the source of pilgrimage and accounts of healings. She insisted that the vision of the

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Figure 2.2 Joseph-Hugues Fabisch, Our Lady of Lourdes (1864), Massabielle grotto, Carrara marble and gilding.

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“jeune fille” was “lovelier than I have ever seen,” although no one that came with her to the grotto could see anything at all.8 The village priests, to whom she conveyed messages from the vision, were incredulous, and she was eventually pressed to ask the vision her name. The vision answered, in the local dialect, “I am the Immaculate Conception” (Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou). The theological dogma proclaiming that Mary was born without sin had been declared by Pius IX in 1854 after a drawn-out struggle, and Bernadette maintained that she did not know what these words meant at the time they were revealed to her by the apparition.9 Eventually, people began to believe Bernadette’s unwavering account of the visions and, four years later, the bishop of the diocese institutionalized what was already a thriving popular devotion. A basilica was commissioned, and in 1873 pilgrimages to the site commenced (Fr. Nelson Baker, who commissioned the Our Lady of Victory grotto in Lackawanna, NY, mentioned earlier, was among those in the inaugural American pilgrim group).10 The site now attracts millions of visitors a year who come from all over the world. Many have submitted accounts of their healings to the Lourdes international medical association, and many more yet return with a physical souvenir of their journey—a bottle of holy water, a statue, a candle—often to bring healing to others (Figure 2.3).11 The sculpture of the Virgin Mary, the image of which many of these souvenir items bear, has been installed in a niche in the grotto since April 4, 1864. Many not familiar with the hagiography will recognize the image immediately. Both the reproduced image and original serve as an aid to devotion and are situated within a long trajectory of Christian art in terms of both their form and purpose. I have already pointed out some of the resonances between the Lourdes phenomenon and medieval pilgrimage, and the decision to commission a statue in the grotto in lieu of an empty niche was meant to inspire a prayerful mental state as well as to dissuade “false” visions. As V. A. Kolve has pointed out in the context of a discussion of medieval English mysticism, “meditation upon images was spiritually necessary to the mystic as a preparation for the higher ascent” before reaching the stage when all images fell away and were no longer a necessity.12 To the medieval observer, to “see” was to understand, through the activation of a clear imagination; this tenet has a biblical basis in Matthew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”13 The idea is also recapitulated in the twelfth-century writings of Hugh and Richard of St. Victor. The first stage of corporeal vision involved the eye of the flesh seeing the form and image of rational things. In the second stage, the imagination was activated

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Figure 2.3 Souvenir bottle of Lourdes water with image of the Virgin Mary and St. Bernadette (left) and cup given to pilgrims for drinking the water at Lourdes with an image of Mary and St. Bernadette. Collection of author.

so that the “mystical significance” was perceived in things. Continuing the ascent, the third stage was characterized by perceiving the spirit or “truth of hidden things . . . by means of forms and figures and similitude,” followed by the final, mystical stage: the “pure and naked seeing of divine reality.”14 To avoid confusion, Hugh of St. Victor presented an actual visible image of Noah’s Ark as a vehicle toward finding God within, which becomes a form of visual exegesis.15 The Ark visually articulates the interior life (in the form of ladders advancing through the various stages of contemplative life and vision) as well as actually becoming the mystical body of Christ, with his limbs and head extending beyond the boat itself. The point was ultimately to assure the viewer of the presence of the divine within, reached first through the optic nerve before unfolding through the levels of vision until the unseen is made visible.16 Later, to a similar end, the visionary mystic St. Teresa of Ávila (1515–82) encouraged holding an image of Jesus in the imagination for the beginners embarking on their first prayerful meditations. At the time Teresa was writing, there was a push toward achieving spiritual ascent without the help of visual aids; but she emphasized that keeping the “image of Jesus’ human form” was the safest path and wholly appropriate for those embarking upon a spiritual journey.17

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The Marian sculpture has served a similar purpose as an aid to prayer and means with which to deter false visions that could occur on the screen of an empty niche, which could otherwise function as a sort of tabula rasa. The original image, which has been reproduced countless times (and copies of which are placed on most reconstructed Lourdes grottoes) stands tall above the wild roses in the grotto at Lourdes. It is made of Carrara marble, with polychromed details such as the blue sash that Mary wears and the gilded roses on her bare feet. She is portrayed as an elegant woman with a slightly elongated neck and cinched waist (contrary to Bernadette’s description of a “jeune fille”; the newspaper accounts, who increased her age to around twenty).18 The body, and the drapery that covers it, are in the convention of classical sculptures which were the artistic ideals of the nineteenth-century French academy. When the sculpture was unveiled to Bernadette, she expressed great dismay that the lady portrayed was both too old and too big. She said, “It is beautiful, but it is not she. Oh no, the difference is as of earth from heaven!”19 She was ill for the inauguration of the statue on April 4, 1864, which thousands attended. The story of the commission is important as it directly links Fabisch to Bernadette, and hence Bernadette to the sculpture. Bernadette herself served as a model for the statue, which is a key point, and perhaps one which has its own resonance in terms of the phenomenology of third-class relics; just as in icons of the Virgin Mary said to have been painted by St. Luke, the creation of the sculpture was conceived and created in physically close proximity to St. Bernadette. It was the well-meaning Lacour family of Lyon who had decided to finance the image, with the commission ultimately being given to Fabisch, then a professor of sculpture at the School of Art in Lyons.20 He was already well known in that city for the statue on the spire of Notre Dame de Fourvière in bronze gilt, had exhibited at the Paris Salons, and was himself a devout Catholic. The Lacours specified that he take Bernadette’s description into account, so he met with her on several occasions. “Aquerò,” which means “she” or “that” in the local dialect of the Pyrenean mountain town, was Bernadette’s name for her vision, which she described as being preceded by white light, “like sunlight on the ground.”21 During her ecstasies, she and Aquerò would walk together and pray the rosary: [S]he was wearing a white gown with a blue sash, a white veil and a golden rose on each foot, the same color as the chain of her Rosary, which had white beads. She was surrounded with white light, but it was not a blinding light. She had blue eyes. When I first saw her, I was a little bit afraid. Thinking that what I was seeing

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Like the interrogations that Teresa of Ávila had endured, the authorities questioned how Bernadette knew the vision wasn’t the devil, and she is said to have replied that the devil “doesn’t say the rosary” and “can’t be as pretty as that.”23 The questioning sessions were unrelenting. Once she was taken to a dress shop and asked to show what kind of material the apparition’s mantle was made of. Upon being shown the finest Lyonnaise silk, Bernadette confirmed that the Virgin Mary of her visions was wearing nothing of the sort. The dressmaker replied that it was the “whitest and silkiest fabric in the city,” and Bernadette stoutly retorted, “That only shows that the Blessed Virgin did not have her dress made by you!”24 On other occasions, she was shown Marian imagery by Leonardo, Raphael, Botticelli, and Dürer—and none, she maintained, did her vision any justice (“My dear mother, how they slander you!”).25 Fabisch, for his part, was personally transformed by Bernadette and her descriptions. In a letter to his family, he invoked canonical sacred art of the high Italian Renaissance to describe not the apparition, but Bernadette’s expression when she spoke of her visions: I never saw anything so beautiful as when I asked [Bernadette] how Our Lady looked when she said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” She rose with great simplicity, joined her hands, and raised her eyes to heaven. Neither Fra Angelico, nor Perugini, nor Raphael, has ever produced anything so sweet and at the same time so deep as the look of this simple young girl. As long as I live I shall never forget her charming expression.26

He recounted that he had “often seen in Italy and elsewhere the masterpieces of great men, of those who have excelled in the portrayal of divine love and ecstasy; in none have I found so much sweetness and charm. Each time I have asked Bernadette for this pose, the same expression has changed, illuminated, and transfigured her.”27 Fabisch’s eldest daughter took note of the changes she saw in her father. In a word, he became happier (and later we will see how Grobler’s use of Fabisch’s image, created in the auspices of this spiritual renewal, has continued positively to effect those who behold it). Fabisch’s daughter wrote that her father’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin was completely renewed, and that every night, she observed him reciting the rosary.28 The project of creating the grotto sculpture was, at its essence, a devotional one, even though in the literature Fabisch’s efforts are often overshadowed by

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Bernadette’s dismay over the accuracy of the image. When questioned about her vision, Bernadette had dismissed the Italian Renaissance Madonnas brought before her, as well as any contemporary attempts to portray her vision.29 She maintained her preference for the diminutive garden sculpture of Mary, Our Lady of the Waters at the convent of Saint-Gildard where she would eventually come to reside, portrayed with arms outstretched and treading on a snake—the symbol for original sin. Bernadette called the image “a perfect resemblance—in the face and clothes.”30 The youthfulness that characterized Bernadette’s vision has created a conundrum for theologians, but Ruth Harris has posited that her description is less surprising if one considers the ancient Marian imagery of the Pyrenean mountains rather than the Madonnas of the Renaissance. Examples would include the Virgin of Rocamadour or the seventeenth-century Virgin with infant sculpture from Notre-Dame de Bétharram.31 This begs the question, why have a sculpture at all—especially one that Bernadette disapproved of— when the grotto walls and water are believed to contain the sacred essence of Lourdes? Despite controversy, the sculpture still remains an integral adjunct to worship, as the pious Lacour sisters and Fabisch had surely intended in their commission. The grotto image was created and received in a religious spirit and, like so many Marian images, has the capacity to further devotion and prayer. Its continued use as an aid to worship can be seen in accounts by pilgrims, such as the confession of a woman writing in the Catholic Digest of 1956. It is not the grotto itself, or the water, but the sculpture that she gazes upon and which ultimately affects her spiritual state: Slowly, I raised my eyes to Our Lady’s face (in the grotto). A feeling of peace such as I had never known, not even as a child, filled my heart and I knew from that moment that I had changed. Call it understanding, call it a miracle, call it anything you like . . .32

Adjacent to the grotto at Lourdes (where the sculpture is installed) are baths containing water from the spring that was revealed to Bernadette by the apparition. A blog post from a pilgrim who has utilized the baths of Lourdes water on numerous occasions for spiritual healing describes the instructions by the volunteers to focus on a statue—again, underscoring the importance of these visual aids as an important adjunct to prayer and healing. The accuracy of the representation and whether or not it is a copy or original is completely secondary to the objective of the image:

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Imaging Pilgrimage During the process, you are instructed to focus on the statue of the Virgin Mary and pray. Even though the water is cold, you find yourself dismissing earthly matters and absorbing the spiritual energy in the room.33

For pilgrims like this, and for those who take home a souvenir from Lourdes, Fabisch’s divergences from Bernadette’s description is less important than the comfort they derive from the familiar image. The Lourdes bottles bearing Fabisch’s image of Bernadette’s vision have many historic precedents. Medieval pilgrim badges contained iconography linked to the sites they were from (a scallop shell meant that the pilgrim had been to Santiago de Compostela, the Madonna and Child for Walsingham, and so on) and were made in large quantities from around the mid-fourteenth century until the Protestant Reformation. These objects are close to modern religious medals in their shape, size, and reproducibility, and an inexact medieval analogue to Lourdes bottles might be a lead ampulla of the sort that were popular at Canterbury. The metal was thin and pliable enough to be pinched shut to hold “Canterbury water,” believed to contain a trace of St. Thomas Becket’s blood; these souvenirs were particularly popular for about a century after he was martyred.34 Items like these were bought by pilgrims at markets surrounding the shrines and were often worn on hats or clothing. The mass production and sale of these badges in the Middle Ages, as today, had several purposes; as aids to devotion, to spur mental pilgrimage, and as a souvenir or a hopeful reminder of some future journey.35 Holy water that was pinched inside (as in the case of the Becket ampullae) could be administered for healing.36 When sewn into psalters and prayer books, the souvenirs provided a more complex devotional experience for the reader or viewer, who could either recall their own journey or embark on a “virtual” mental pilgrimage.37 A pragmatic, but important point is that the purchase of these reduced damage to the shrine itself, which would collapse if every pilgrim chipped off a piece of the wall or grotto. The idea of the badge is that it could be touched to the wall or dipped in a holy well and was believed to retain the spirit of the site, so there was no need to take part of the wall itself. Beyond all of this, the sale of badges brought revenue to the shrine; even though they were usually sold in adjacent markets (as in at Lourdes today) they still served as an advertisement for whomever saw them being worn; local traders and craftspeople were hence able to earn a living. Today, Lourdes water can be freely collected from spigots connected to the spring, and there are signs encouraging pilgrims to take and drink. It is important to note, however, that commerce inside the sanctuary itself is strictly forbidden.38 Donations are accepted for bottles (for those who did not bring their own),

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plastic drinking cups, and candles, but they are not for sale. Nevertheless, outside the sanctuary, souvenir shops abound as they did in the Middle Ages. For some pilgrims, the souvenir industry undermines the spiritual experience they expect, and for others, it is part of the pilgrimage process, knowing that a souvenir brought home can spur a sense of communitas-through-culture when shared with a fellow believer. In her classic book Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary, in relation to what she sees as an emptiness at Lourdes based, in part, on the failure of the Church to “reach the soul through the senses” (as in, for example, St. Peter’s in Rome), Marina Warner asks whether the sublime has to be beautiful. “[B]ut to admit this,” she writes, “would mistake form for content altogether and indict contemporary piety for failing to meet aesthetic standards.”39 A travel blog from a Lourdes visitor called Karin Ling seems to underline this point, but then her opinion changes in watching someone at one of the shops. She says she was sent off to Lourdes with snickers and sarcasm, and braced herself for the spectacle. She situates Fabisch’s sculpture in the same category as the “objects hanging from the grotto” (these are ex-votos left in thanksgiving by those on whose behalf the Virgin Mary has interceded). Ling sees them as an eyesore that have become kitsch more due to their form than function. She decides to attend the daily Mass for the sick and observes believers being relieved of their suffering, and the compassion and understanding that surrounds them. To her, it is a different Lourdes than she had previously seen. Trying to reconcile her impressions, Ling asked one of the volunteers how religion could become so commercialized, and the volunteer recounted a story of a town in Argentina where an image of the Virgin Mary, brought back from Lourdes, has become its own site of pilgrimage for those who couldn’t make their own journey to the shrine (an example of the perceived transfer of spirit from site to representation). Later, Ling describes watching a man with a cane looking at St. Bernadette bags and baseball caps, and quietly wonders who he was thinking of back home.40 This is an old and familiar story. In 1834, the Protestant art historian Anna Jameson reported a visit to a miraculous Madonna in Florence that devotees had lovingly adorned with silk fabrics and metallic crowns. She was initially indignant at what she saw as “pitiable and ridiculous superstition.”41 She also admits feeling scornful that a painting that was “not destitute of merit” had been covered with devotional paraphernalia.42 These musings on the lack of taste of the Catholic peasantry were interrupted when an Italian woman and her child approached the image. Jameson watched from a marble step, unobserved, as the woman lifted the child so he could kiss the image. She proceeded to teach the child the

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Ave Maria (“repeating it word for word, slowly and distinctly, so that I got it too,” Jameson wrote43). Finally, they left some money in the offerings box and left.44 This simple piety and devotion moved Jameson, who, no longer finding the Madonna “an object to ridicule,” described “rejoicing in kinder, gentler, happier thoughts,”45 and even copied out the Italian Ave Marias she had learned.46 This way of structuring the narrative was, of course, designed to win over Protestant sensibilities in the nineteenth century, when she was writing, which she did with some success. As one reviewer wrote: if the outward religious ceremonies of the Romish church glittered with vain and empty pageantry so as to become almost a religion of sights and sounds, there were, at the successive periods of which Mrs. Jameson writes, thousands who knew little of its outward show, and worshipped at very lowly and humble shrines.47

Scholarship has usually sought to distinguish the authentically religious aspects of Lourdes from what is seen as a “modern debasement” in the form of vulgar art, architecture, and souvenirs.48 Léon Bloy posited that the shrine was a sentimental and feminine substitute for austere and serious worship. J. K. Huysmans criticized what he saw as a vulgar spectacle at the shrine, particularly repelled by the art and architecture. However, he still found prayer and healing underneath it all, but only by extracting this from the material culture of the place.49 In her important study on Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine, Suzanne Kaufman has challenged all of this, positing that Lourdes is a distinctly modern religious phenomenon. She writes that “At Lourdes, sacred and profane— religious practice and secular world—never stood in opposition, but, rather comingled in a process of constant cross-fertilization,” saliently pointing out that guidebooks emphasized the modern character of the site—the train travel, the electric lights, and even the commercial district.50 Therefore, the religious experience was in part formed by modernity, commerce, and indeed the society of the spectacle that characterized the fin de siècle in France, hence effectively collapsing Durkheim’s dichotomy between the sacred and profane.51

Mary, materiality, and message: a pilgrimage through art Hettienne Grobler (Sri BhaktimayiMa) is a mixed-media artist who creates assemblages of found objects, including pilgrimage medals, ex-votos, and souvenir Marian statues. Grobler’s work subverts commodity culture with its focus on art

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as spiritual praxis and the transformation of mass-produced souvenir objects into narrative artworks that are intended to engender a pilgrimage experience. Her art incorporates ritual praxis, ritual objects, and souvenirs in order to create an embodied experience for others, which can be examined using the medieval framework of pilgrimage through material culture.52 Karst’s model of translation draws from the linguistic theories of Michel de Certeau and corrects the lexicon of “surrogate” spaces, emphasizing instead the fact that sites like Grobler’s are related to the sacred site that they are modeled on yet have their own distinctness as newly created spaces in and of themselves.53 All of the objects examined here are portable, and most not only contain reproductions but are also themselves photographically reproduced. Grobler’s works are complex and multivalent, but the artist’s intense Marian devotion allows for a fruitful dialogue with earlier art that emerged from the same ritual praxis. The aim is, in Grobler’s words, to “show how the sensible, material realms and the imagin[ed] realms work together to show . . . the glory of God hidden in the ordinariness of everyday living . . . [I] create from the eye of the heart, rather than the eye of the mind,” again significantly complicating Durkheim’s distinctions. Grobler comes from a Dutch Reformed tradition and had a conversion of heart through a number of formative experiences. These included a decade at an ashram in India and several encounters with Marian imagery at pilgrimage sites and festivals. Although the primary focus here is on bringing her artwork into conversation with medieval precedents (and especially the mnemonic capacity of objects used in assemblage and extra-illustration), it can also function as a window into a dialogical approach to comparative religion. Grobler’s religious impulses leave room for the possibility of the indwelling of the divine that occurs in the art of the dharmic traditions, wherein a ritually consecrated image is conceptualized as a receptacle of the deity.54 The belief of the “indwelling” of saints in icons, in a Christian context, contradicts the strict guidance of theologians like John of Damascus (who emphasized an attention to the prototype, not image; it is only in the consecration of the wine and bread during the Eucharist that matter can become the prototype, in this case the blood and body of Christ). Others, like Basil of Caesarea, have, however, stressed the ontological connection between icons and their prototypes, underscoring a connection that has influenced both popular piety and even art history.55 For example, in the much-cited text Likeness and Presence, Hans Belting asserted that “[a]uthentic images seemed capable of action, seemed to possess dynamis, or supernatural power. God and the saints took up their abode in them . . . and

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spoke through them.”56 In the nineteenth century, Ivan Kireevsky stressed that the Iviron icon of the Virgin Mary “had absorbed the torrents of prayers which had poured over it, the cries of afflicted and unhappy souls. It has therefore been filled with this power of faith which now shines from it in order to be reflected in the hearts of these supplicants.”57 While theological discourse might differ, the idea has become embedded in not just the religious imagination but in scholarship; these are the images that are believed to weep, to protect, and that stand outside the hierarchy for minorities and those on the margins.58 Grobler’s work, which derives from several traditions, has at its core an attention to the sacred feminine and draws out “how gender matters in a crosscultural study of divinity”.59 There are two paths that Grobler felt called to, both based on what she sees as a love relationship to be “entered into with the divine.” Her spiritual journey took her and her family to India over a ten-year period of staying in ashrams and havelis (holy houses), and eventually to the ashram in Haridwar of the female Hindu mystic Anandamyi Ma. She entered into a guru–shishya relationship with a guru and immersed herself in Bhakti theology. She was eventually initiated as Sri BhaktymayiMa in Haridwar. The process of conferring a spiritual name marks the initiand’s new path. She has led retreats in Dubai, Malaysia, India and South Africa. In her words: Bhakti is the essence of this love relationship that one experiences with the Divine. I think one can describe bhakti as “being absolutely madly in love.” At first one is in love with God and the realization that God is “in love” with you; then this expands and you start to see the love in everything and eventually you see the “face of God” in everyone and everything.60

For Grobler, “love” is the foundation of her personal beliefs and the visual expression it finds, and she acknowledges that this means that she can relate to many religions and paths. This is engendered in her art practice, which has an important inheritance in both the traditions we have been discussing—she writes, “When I start with a new piece, it may be a giant painting or a tiny piece of jewelry, I set out to show the presence of Divine Love in our physical reality.”61 Grobler found a bridge between Christianity—not the Dutch Reformed Protestantism from which she came, but Catholicism—and Bhakti theology—in the figure of the Virgin Mary. She describes a mystical experience upon visiting Lourdes where she wrote twenty-six pages including rosaries, sutras, and mantras—including Yoga teachings, devotions to the Hindu concept of God the

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Mother (especially Lalitha Saundarya and Kali Ma), and the Virgin Mary: “I spent the next four years marrying Western and Christian teachings and myths and the tantric practice of sacred desire into the devotional and spiritual practice.”62 Durga Maa is a Hindu deity63 known for her courage and strength. She rides a tiger or a lion and she assists one on the inner levels in slaying the demons of the mind. I made this mala in the same pattern as the Rosary of the Holy Mother. She is one and the same, by whatever name you call Her.64

Through an interreligious mystical theology drawing from a diversity of traditions, Mary becomes an embodiment of Divine Love and the Beloved in Grobler’s artwork, which can be understood as an invitation for the viewer to enter into this relationship too, hence creating an embodied experience. This also relates to the Victorine notions of “spiritual seeing” through a channel of love. Grobler calls her shrines “places where the immanent meets the transcendent” and explains that she tries to capture the “eternal moment . . . mirrored in a mythical or scriptural story.” These moments are “expressions of love” and, again, from the perspective of a visual artist who is attempting to engender these theological constructs in work that transcends physical and temporal boundaries, she explains that “the camera of her eye stop(s) time and that moment lives forever.”65 Most of the objects and ephemera she uses are collected at holy sites. She describes her photographs of these assemblages as an experiment in “captur[ing] the fragrance of the Presence.”66 This idea of the imbued object resonates with the idea of “transferable holiness,” which became an important aspect of popular piety starting as early as the end of the fourth century and persists due to its deep rootedness in human nature.67 Even the Catechism of the Council of Trent contains an argument for efficacy of the “shadows of the Saints” as channels to the divine.68 Photography is, in its very essence, a medium of light and shadow, which captures objects and transfers them onto film, then paper. Every step of the way is mediated by touch—from the flash of light to the silvernitrate process which fixes the image. This notion was secularized starting around the Reformation and then probably entered critical discourse through Walter Benjamin’s influential theorizations of the loss of “aura” through mechanical reproduction in which an important caveat is often left out. Benjamin actually states that “in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced.”69 As

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Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser posit in their book on the “enduring Western belief ” in the supernatural power of images in the northwest of Italy and beyond, “there is clearly a reciprocal relationship between copy and prototype, of which the history of image cults can show many examples.”70 Grobler intentionally explores this idea of presence through photography embedded in these handheld books. For her, the printed image captures and contains a trace of sacred landscapes and spaces, creating a multivalent and enchanted experience of viewing.71 The series Nine Days for the Lady of Lourdes: A Novena was created to commemorate and allow others to experience her pilgrimage to the grotto of Massabielle. Grobler began making the series, which functioned as an exercise in prayer and meditation, on the February anniversary of when Bernadette’s visions began and continued until the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes. The pilgrim viewer travels from station to station, following the suggestion of a path that Grobler created, but the aim is to engender a new devotional experience that is ultimately their own. Perhaps, for some, this is the “imagined future” that Elsner describes in relation to medieval pilgrimage souvenirs. Indeed, Grobler’s project can be situated firmly within the tradition of transferred pilgrimages and the idea of the perceived transfer of “spirit” from object to representation, especially as exemplified through third-class or “contact” relics. This is the popular belief that prayer cards, bits of cloth, souvenirs, pilgrimage badges, or other objects that come into contact with the bodily remains of a saint (no matter how small), or items worn or owned by a saint, are imbued with a trace of the sacredness of that person. Joseph Braun, SJ described such objects as “retaining something of [the holy person’s] sacred character.”72 I have already given a few examples ancient and medieval variations of this practice.73 A souvenir in the collection of Francis Douce at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford comprises part of a black veil with a certification that it had “been worn by the Sacred Statue of Loreto on Holy Thursday and Friday, and then was touched on the Sacred Walls; the Sacred Robe and the Sacred Bowl of the Most Blessed Virgin,” dated 1769 shows the continuing popularity of such items (Figure 2.4). Canon law officially forbids the sale of bodily relics, but it is possible to buy prayer cards on Amazon.com and eBay with notes of certification stating that they have been touched to the relics of various saints (Figure 2.5). In her comprehensive essay on the origin third-class relics and modern and medieval understandings of their use, Julia M. H. Smith has noted that the classification is “a mid-twentiethcentury variant on the categories prescribed in post-Tridentine canon law”

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Figure 2.4 Part of a black veil and certification that it had “been worn by the Sacred Statue of Loreto on Holy Thursday and Friday, and then was touched on the Sacred Walls; the Sacred Robe and the Sacred Bowl of the Most Blessed Virgin” (1769). Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

Figure 2.5 St. Lucy prayer card and “contact” relic with certification (“St Lucy / This piece of Cloth has been touched to her relics”). Collection of author.

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and highlights a key point, which is the “tension between spontaneous and officialized veneration.”74 A connection can be drawn between medieval and modern sensibilities; in the distant past, and still today (as shown through this research) relics are objects that “derive their meaning from the subjective understanding of those who . . . cherished them.”75 McDannell, too, has asserted that “[w]hile religious authorities can easily say that an object has no power, I want to argue that Christians have not always listened to church authorities. Protestants, as well as Catholics, cherish religious images to the point that their devotions fuse the sign with the referent.”76 While official teachings have discouraged such thinking, the focus here is on personal belief, expressions of those beliefs (which often draw from various sources), and how they are received. The imagery associated with, and collected from, holy places offers “a well of inspiration” for Grobler. As a pilgrim and seeker, she had traveled to the sacred sites of Glastonbury, to the shrine of Padre Pio, and followed the footsteps of St. Brigid at the sacred labyrinth in Kildare, Ireland. However, it was her trip to Lourdes, and her participation in the daily rituals, which led her to become a full-time artist. “These small shadowboxes,” she wrote of the Novena series, “are vignettes, a moment in time in the life of ordinary human beings, lifted out of the mundane into the numinous, merely by seeing life as sacred.”77 Just as in a foot pilgrimage to the geographic site of the Lourdes grotto, Grobler aims to unite the heavenly and earthly realms in her work. Like the icons and medals she incorporates into these objects, her work “participates in what it represents” (to borrow an expression from Aidan Hart). In her way, she is sewing medieval pilgrimage badges onto a devotional manuscript. The narratives explored can be seen as the manuscript “text” (in this case, through a visual hermeneutic) which is then punctuated by the objects she collected on her own pilgrimage. The efficacy of these objects is apparent in the reviews of Grobler’s art. One woman wrote of a portable Marian shrine (Queen of the Heart and Rose) that she felt “closer to the Blessed Mother and all her power already” through the inclusion of “healing water from Lourdes, medal, rosary and the beautifully fragrant sachet of salts.”78 Another spoke of the tactility of the objects: “holding the items really do connect me to the pilgrimage places and the original sacred relics. Every single item . . . [collected] from the various sacred sites are saturated and bristling with their energy; and so, through them I personally find that I am able to feel a very strong connection to the various forms of Mary they represent.”79 Yet another explicitly mentioned the inclusion of a candle used in a pilgrimage procession, noting that “everything in the shrine has a particular meaning and

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purpose.”80 Through the use of souvenir as site, her art creates a dynamic viewing situation. Like Grobler’s personal journey, the nine Novena boxes function as a meditation through image, leading the pilgrim viewer from station to station. The centerpiece of the first Novena (“Art Novena for Our Lady of Lourdes”) is Fabisch’s familiar statue, with a few alterations; her mantle is trimmed in gold and the roses at her feet are pink rather than gilded (Plate 4). A pilgrim, crowned by the holy spirit, holds a devotional image of St. Bernadette attached to a simple rosary. Grobler has chosen to represent Christ here by the sun; Sunday is when Christians celebrate the memory of the Resurrection. She underlines the point with the holly branch, its berries symbolic of the blood of the Crucifixion. The typewriter number nine stands for the Novena, an ancient nine-day private or public devotion in the Catholic Church traditionally to obtain special graces—from the Latin novem. Grobler invokes Orthodox Marian iconography in the inclusion of the small Black Madonna of Częstochowa, Poland, who holds the infant Christ. The miraculous image is said to have been painted by St. Luke and is now in the Jasna Góra Monastery of Poland, a major site of pilgrimage.81 As with all icons, this sacred image manifests the world transfigured in Christ—an imperfect and earthly image pointing to its heavenly prototype. Finally, with attention to the aural nature of prayer, and perhaps the Ave Marias of the Marian processions at Lourdes, Grobler has lined her portable altar with sheet music. Other works in her Novena series are narrative, including a small shrine for St. Bernadette with birthday candles representing the tall tapers that pilgrims light at the shrine. Within the same diorama is a depiction of Bernadette the poor shepherdess. Again, in the background, we see Bernadette’s vision of Our Lady represented by a small, plastic souvenir version, modeled on the grotto sculpture. All of the items, including the embroidered prayer card that serves as the background, were brought back from her pilgrimage to the shrine. The Mysteries of Mary tarot deck is a related project, comprising seventy-eight photographed Marian box shrines reproduced on heavy, varnished card stock that can be purchased as a set. It includes a booklet describing the “inner mysteries of the journey of the soul as portrayed by Mary” (which comes signed by Grobler) as well as storage pouch printed with what looks like a nineteenth-century French prayer card with Mary framed in paper-cut lace (Figure 2.6).82 At first the idea of overlaying these devotional shrines into a tarot deck might seem surprising, but that would be to ignore the origins of the cards and their historic reclamation

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Figure 2.6 Hettienne Grobler, Mysteries of Mary cards (2016) and rosary, screenprinted pouch, and objects. Photo: Author.

from late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century occultism back into the scope of Christian iconography. This is precisely what, for example, the magisterial Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism aims to do. The German edition of the book was prefaced by the Swiss systematic theologian and scholar of theological aesthetics, Hans Urs von Balthasar,83 who wrote:

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A thinking, praying Christian of unmistakable purity reveals to us the symbols of Christian Hermeticism in its various levels of mysticism, gnosis, and magic . . . By way of the Major Arcana the author seeks to lead meditatively into the deeper, all-embracing wisdom of the Catholic Mystery.84

It was also endorsed by Commonweal, Stratford Caldecott, Thomas Keating, OCSO (who calls it “the greatest contribution to date toward the rediscovery and renewal of the Christian contemplative tradition”) and even Richard Knopf of the National Catholic Reporter who says that the book “begs not only to be studied cover to cover, but also to be savored, meditated upon, and assimilated into one’s life.”85 The book was first published anonymously and posthumously in 1967 with a revised and complete edition released in 1984 under the title Méditations sur les 22 arcanes majeurs du Tarot, both published by AubierMontaigne, Paris. The dedication of the book to Our Lady of Chartres further ties it to the Marian themes and iconography of Grobler’s cards. Before they were associated with fortune-telling, tarot cards had initially formed a popular game for Italian nobility, which may account for the pluralism of didactic (religious) iconography and moral allegory, game-playing, and the carnivalesque.86 The iconography of tarot cards can be construed as a pictorial narrative of a pilgrimage, beginning with card “0,” “The Wise Fool,” who embarks on an archetypal journey where allegorical images and figures are encountered, including a pope, a hermit, a personified figure of temperance, and so on. The cards mirror the content and even order of illustrated medieval pilgrimage narratives such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Guillaume de Deguileville’s Le Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (1400), and Langland’s Piers Plowman.87 In a nine-volume opus on the subject, Antoine Court de Gébelin offered an interpretation that the cards—known as “tarot”—were named after the ancient Egyptian Tar (way) and Ro/Ros/Rog (royal) meaning a “royal road” in Le Monde Primitif: analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne (1781).88 Francis Douce, a nineteenth-century antiquarian who collected tarot alongside paper-cut Catholic prayer cards, multiple copies of illuminated versions of the Guillaume, Dante, and Langland texts (and whose wide-ranging collection was bequeathed to the University of Oxford upon his death), was dismissive of Gébelin’s project.89 He, like the later anonymous writer of Meditations on the Tarot and in line with Grobler’s project, ventured his own allegorical interpretations of the cards: where Gébelin suggests that the eagle, lion, cow, and young man represent the four seasons in the card “The World,” Douce suggests a specifically Christian iconography, positing that the figure in the middle is probably the Virgin Mary, surrounded by a rosary with the symbols of the four evangelists.90

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Outside a Christian context, tarot cards are used increasingly as part of mindfulness practices; not necessarily as a means of future prediction but rather as a tool to understand the present through a reflection on archetypal imagery.91 The format of a tarot deck, but with Marian imagery, has meant that the cards have had wide appeal and a number of uses (meditation, pilgrimage through images, tradition-bridging). Taryn Harris, who had bought one of Grobler’s decks three years earlier, explained that she was more interested in “comparative” religion, mysticism, gnostic aspects, folk lore, myths. [I] love seeing the strands of similarity and interfaith understanding and seeing myself in the other. I could spend my life in contemplation, research, pilgrimages and devotion. [It is] what excites me and makes my heart sing. This deck helped me integrate my Catholic roots and Mary into my own ever-evolving practice.92

For her, the deck was especially appealing because it “links to Mary and the Divine Feminine.”93 Denise Renye, a San Francisco-based holistic psychologist and Veriditas labyrinth facilitator trainer (see Chapter 5) uses the Mysteries of Mary deck as a way to: hold space for spiritual ritual with clients and patients centered around goddesses and women figures like Mary . . . it beautifully bridges traditions and worlds.94

Another woman, Sophia Ehrman, bought both a shrine and a deck from Grobler, and explained that these artworks, for her, were a celebration of motherhood and a reminder of Mary’s role as protectress and part of a return to her “Catholic roots.” She wrote: I especially love how the Virgin Mary is venerated within the church, and that most countries in the world each have their own icon of her as their patroness . . . To me, the Blessed Mother is also a great protectress. She has appeared and instructed many people all over the world with her divine guidance, warnings and revelations. I purchased that particular shrine from Hettienne because of its pink and blue colors and collage of images. Immediately it made me think of motherhood, and welcoming a new baby. I have had difficulty conceiving in the past, so was exceptionally happy that healing water from Lourdes would be included in the purchase, and I could bless and pray over myself with the holy water.95

As described earlier, Grobler operates outside of the world of the commercial gallery. Like Fabisch, the work she creates is either an act of personal devotion or through commissions. To underscore what Ehrman wrote in the passage just quoted, there is a triangulation of symbol (“collage of images”), material culture

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(“healing water from Lourdes”), and prototype (Mary herself). Paired with this is an important conjunction of making, meaning, and reception—all of which work to create a pilgrimage through images. There are also a few objects that are included with the Mysteries of Mary deck (what the Turners might call “tactile transmissions of grace”); mine were sent with a rosary and a small plastic statue of Mary, arms outstretched. It is reminiscent of the convent garden sculpture that Bernadette preferred to Fabisch’s image, and also of the Miraculous Medal. The latter is an important Catholic popular devotion based on an apparition of Mary that occurred in 1830 in Paris. Catherine Labouré, then a 24-year-old novice with the Daughters of Charity, reported an apparition of the Virgin Mary in which she was given the task of creating a medal that would bear her image, and to promote groups of youth who would then wear the medal and minister to the poor.96 More than a billion medals bearing imagery taken from Revelation and other sources (Mary stands on a globe and crushes a serpent, hands outstretched and with radiant beams emanating from them with a halo of twelves stars) were produced and distributed during Catherine’s lifetime.97 Robert P. Maloney, CM in a special issue of America on “Contemporary Catholics on Traditional Devotions,” emphasizes that “the symbols on the medal were, in fact, a graphic catechesis about God’s provident care for his people.”98 The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines (henceforth DPP ) calls the medals “a witness of faith and sign of veneration of the Holy Mother of God, as well as trust in her maternal protection.”99 The medal appears in several of Grobler’s shrines, but the “IV of Roses, Mary Salvatrix” (Plate 5a), is explicitly celebratory of the devotion and meant to lead the viewer directly into the inner sanctum of the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal in Paris. Grobler writes that “[t]he inside of the shrine reflects the Presence of Beauty and Harmony that is palpable [there]”: On the front it has an image of Mary, Lady of Grace with rays of light streaming from her hands down to the earth. The back of the medal is encircled with the twelve stars from the passage in Revelations of “a woman clothed with the sun . . . and twelve stars”. She also told her that those who wear the medal around their neck will have special protection and that she has many graces to grant those who ask.100

In line with the warning in the DPP that the Miraculous Medal should not be “regarded as a talisman or lead to any form of blind credulity,”101 the exoteric meaning of the card urges against “hold[ing] too tightly to earthly fortune or constructs” in the pursuit of happiness and stability.102 There is also a canonical

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attention to the intercessory role of Mary and presence of Christ with the inclusion of the words of Hildegard of Bingen: O Salvatrix, You who bore the new light For humankind: Gather the members of your Son into celestial harmony.103

The delicate, white crochet lacework that borders the top of the shrine is reminiscent of French nineteenth-century prayer cards with their finely cut paper backings, and the tiny pedestal under Mary is styled with pearled baroque foliate decorations. Not one but eight medals of different sizes and enameling flank and adorn the central statue of Mary. The shadowbox shrine that Grobler photographed for card XXI, traditionally “The World” (and reimagined as “Heaven on Earth”) is again Mary as Immaculate Conception (Plate 5b). A souvenir statue of Mary is surrounded by a halo bearing her name. The symbolism brings together much of the rest of the iconography that she develops in the Marian Arcana, but importantly her description also links the capacities of material to become a vehicle of spiritual contemplation: Here we have the sanctification of the ordinary world: the sacred marriage between spirit and flesh, nature and soul, the ordinary and the sacred; the restoration and crowning of the Feminine Divine in humanity and in our world, thus creating heaven on earth.104

The description in conjunction with collection of symbols on the card emphasizes the connection between earthly objects and their spiritual forms. It is resonant with Neoplatonism, where the logos is made visible creating a liminal point of contact between the earthly, visible world of forms and that of the unseen. One example might be Augustine’s metaphor of the soul in exile, which has been reimagined and (ostensibly) secularized through narrative art and literature.105 The journey of the “holy fool” becomes the imagined pilgrimage of the viewer through the assemblages of souvenirs and images in the shrines, photographed and reproduced as the cards. There are several examples throughout this book where the representation of a sacred site went on to inspire a physical pilgrimage to that place, rather than the reverse. Taryn Harris recounted that she had the opportunity to go to Lourdes after working with the Mysteries of Mary deck and, while there, felt that the cards had captured what she described as: The experience of the sacred and profane. The marriage of the opposites. Small cramped shops selling souvenirs to incredible artwork, mosaics and architecture in the grandest form all in Her name. The need for humankind to believe in

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miracles and the power of devotion . . . The humanity and vulnerability of all those I encountered there and the diversity of people I met, all willing to share their reasons for being there and personal stories106

It is worth quoting the description of her experience there at length: Visiting Bernadette’s home, walking her path, reading the literature . . . I was in an elevated state for most of my time there yet so grounded in who I was. Full of deep appreciation and I felt so connected to all the people there and Mary. It all “made sense” on a “being” level, not thinking level. I remember not thinking or planning, just following my intuition and having the most incredible adventure and moments of communion with self, other and Mary. I remember thinking what the power of the collective energy of the tens of thousands of people there every day singing praises must be, bring their “best” selves and how that might be keeping the balance with all the other suffering and negativity happening in the world. It felt like a devotion to LOVE, faith, the Sacred Heart of us all. Collecting water, showering in it, drinking it, allowing the ritual for healing and nourishment—tending to the sacred waters within and without.107

The cards themselves were an invitation to an embodied experience through images, and then, in a reversal of “medial shift” inspired a journey to Lourdes. After the journey, the cards retained their role as a way to access interior wisdom, as Harris describes, but are also inherently connected to the pilgrimage experience. Usually the medial chain goes from site to souvenir, but Elsner has described the souvenir’s function as a way to inspire journeys, or as a vehicle to activate the imagine to contemplate a hoped-for future pilgrimage. Fabisch’s grotto statue appears in different formats in at least five of the shrines converted into cards across three suits—Vessels (traditionally Cups, here representing Mary’s life as virgin), Holy Rood (traditionally Wands, and relating to the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary), and Roses (traditionally Pentacles or coins, and here relating to Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth).108 The “III of Vessels” (Plate 6a) contains two images of the sculpture—a large pink image on a simple earthen vessel or jar, and another crowned with a silver cup. The shrine is bordered in tiny fruits and flowers, relating to the border designs on so many medieval books of hours—the Hours of the Virgin, adorned with ripe, red strawberries flanked with tiny white blossoms, traditionally representing Mary who simultaneously fruits and flowers (Figure I.1). The apples possibly recall the typology of Mary as a “second Eve,” a popular motif in art that has origins that reach back as far as the second century when Irenaeus overlaid “St Paul’s motif

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of Christ as the second Adam” on the story of Mary, hence positing an important role in salvation history.109 We have already seen the iconography of her stamping the head of the serpent who tempted the first woman into sin in the images of the Miraculous Medal as well as in Our Lady of the Waters at Saint-Gildard. The Exsultet from the Easter vigil also refers to the “necessarium Adae peccatum” (or “necessary sin of Adam”) which became the medieval hymn “Adam lay ybounden” and celebrates the moment he takes the apple, the action of which leads, eventually, to Mary being crowned Queen of Heaven.110 The abundant grapes relate to the sacrificial blood shed during the Crucifixion, which becomes the Eucharistic drink shared at Mass. Mary’s role in salvation history is visually recapitulated in the cup above her head; she bears the sorrows of her son. A figure of a woman holds out a tremendous bunch of grapes with a vessel in her other hand, usually a symbol of Mary’s womb, life-giving like both water and the Eucharistic cup. Grobler’s description points to the relationship of Anna (St. Anne), Mary’s mother, and the Hebrew Bible typology of Hannah, who also bore a child at the very advanced age of eighty.111 The “VII of Vessels” (Plate 6b) shrine relates to Grobler’s Novena image, explored earlier, in both iconographic content as well as an intent to “evoke the miracle which is Lourdes and the apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes . . . a place of mystical and spiritual healing of mind and soul which no-one can explain.”112 It is decorated with paper-cut and perhaps textile lacework with two silver birthday-cake candles (here great tapers like those placed by pilgrimage groups visiting the grotto at Massabielle) rising from two earthen vessels. A tiny version of Fabisch’s grotto statue stands slightly to the left, white save for silver borders and the traditional blue sash, hands folded and adorned with a rosary with pearled white beads and a tiny silver cross that rests on a half-moon, tilted on its curve like a receiving vessel, and resting on the two roses that Bernadette described. A diminutive figure representing Bernadette (set against the enormity of her visions), kneels behind a tiny lamb with hands piously folded. There is an abundance of animals but also shells and sea creatures around the lower part of the shrine, evocative perhaps of a seaside grotto. The figure of Bernadette is slightly larger in the “Handmaiden of Roses” (Plate 7a). Her faithful lamb relates to her faith in God as well as to her life as shepherdess and all others to whom she is now a patron saint. According to Grobler, a further symbolism the lamb carries is “the herd mentality of human nature: that part in us that will not break with tradition or set off alone.”113 Bernadette holds beads that culminate in a tiny metal rose, and the fruit and flowers from the borders of

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the three of Vessels are arranged in a basket to the right. Above two pink flowers under five painted red roses a sign reads “Lourdes” (to further underscore the iconography), and above this a little version of the Mary with the blue sash and folded hands of the familiar statue stands. Grobler describes the dark cave behind Bernadette and the radiance of “the vision of the Lady in White in front of her, thus stepping into the light of a new inner life”: The story of Saint Bernadette and the appearance of Mary as the Immaculate Conception birthed a new era for humanity and the recognition of the feminine as the Holy Bride at one with all of Creation and Creator.114

Grobler’s attention to the feminine is apt, and resonates with Marina Warner’s comments on one of the unique features of Bernadette’s vison as well as the established iconography of Our Lady of Lourdes (forever etched on the Catholic imagination) and that Mary is not portrayed as the Theotokos, or God-bearer— the crux of Marian devotion since early Christianity. Both Bernadette’s vision and Fabisch’s sculpture, by proxy, can be positioned against derogatory descriptions of postpartum Mary as nothing but “an empty purse” that was once filled, metaphorically, with gold.115 To Grobler, whose personal devotion and spirituality comes from a wellspring of sources from Hildegard of Bingen to the Bible and Thomas Merton, as well as her own pilgrimages from Marian sites from Glastonbury to Lourdes, acknowledges Mary’s role in “eternally birthing the Divine Son” but also posits her as part of the Jewish Mariam tradition, as inculturated with goddess traditions across religious and geographic boundaries, and also “a tradition exclusively [Mary’s] own.”116 Again, this is not out of place in Mariological discourse. Émile Saillens posited long ago that the blackness of the Black Madonnas relates to the fact that creation emerges from nothingness— the void before the calling forth of light—the darkness of the womb.117 More recently, Sarah Jane Boss underscored this and contextualized it within Christian theology pointing to Mary as representative of “that which all new life is born and in virtue of which everything that exists shares a common substance . . . [it] is the ‘deep’ of Genesis 1.1.”118 She is the opposite of the “empty purse” as the iconoclasts called her, and rather a place of origin and life. At the time of this writing, Grobler has begun work on a new deck. It is a vibrant celebration of images of the Black Madonna where the Virgin Mary is portrayed with dark skin.119 These images, most always connected to miracles, have been the subject of much scholarly speculation. Some have posited that most of these images have darkened over time from candle soot; this is erroneous

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in many cases and, as Daniela Vasco from the Wellcome Collection in London has stated, a “symptom of cultural whitewashing.”120 The sumptuous descriptive passages in Song of Songs have often been adapted visually in Marian imagery, including Song 1:5, Μέλαινά εἰμι καὶ καλή (“Black am I and beautiful”). Following Marvin Pope, Jaroslav Pelikan has suggested translating the Hebrew (also preserved in the Greek of the Septuagint) as “and beautiful” rather than “but beautiful.” For Pelikan, who has long emphasized the importance of art and images as an approach to biblical hermeneutics, the Black Madonnas of Częstochowa and Guadalupe express the “exegetical intuition that, regardless of the translation, the Virgin was indeed black and beautiful” as well as “an ambassador to that vast majority of the human race who were not white.”121 Others yet have posited a connection to the Goddess tradition of Egypt, including images of Isis with infant Horus. As with her other Marian art, Grobler’s Black Madonna deck has been a deep dive into this imagery and a prayerful experience. It has also been a way to explore “how far back racism has been forcefully applied and internalised. One cannot really not separate the Black Lives Matter ideology and the Black Madonna and I have at times felt such awe that this deck is being created in these times.”122 Her social-media posts with images of these works-inprogress have been interspersed with essays on the Black Madonna as a way to celebrate Black lives. Grobler is not alone in connecting images of the Black Madonna to Black Lives Matter activism and outcry; another important (and visually arresting) example is Mark Doox’s icon, Our Lady of Ferguson and All Who Have Died of Gun Violence (2016).123 Although less overtly political, Grobler’s project has every potential to be a powerful tool for reflecting on, and advocating the abolishment of, anti-Black racism through the Hindu and Catholic theologies that her work engenders, via both her artistic process and the iconological content. The “III Holy Rood” card of the Mysteries of Mary deck (Plate 7b) foregrounds the crucified Christ with the Chartres labyrinth behind him (see Chapter 5), yet still points to the divine feminine. Marian roses bloom above him and a skull at his feet is a reminder of Golgotha, where the cross was erected. Three statues of Mary, including the pink version of the Fabisch’s grotto sculpture that we saw in the “III Vessels,” flank Christ, in this case representing the “Three Marys” of the Gospel of John who participate in various ways in the Passion narrative. Grobler’s emphasis on the divine feminine is in this case aligned with von Balthasar’s theology of the three Marys, who posits that the “Joannine mystery of being in agreement with the sacrifice of the Lord is, in its central dimension, a feminine

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mystery,” pointing specifically to the women who bore witness to the Passion (Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene, and his mother) and drawing on the work of Adrienne von Speyr’s meditations on the Gospel of John.124 The three Marys’ roles in the triduum mortis can be seen as an “ecclesial acceptance of the fundamental moments of the Christ event: the Incarnation, the Passion and the Resurrection.”125 The separation of Christ and His mother at the cross where “there is achieved the ultimate form of the relationship between this Mother and this Son, this Bride and this Bridegroom, this Lord and this Handmaid”; ultimately, he ties this to the feminine role of the Church “not only initially, but all the way.”126 Grobler makes the same theological point in the “Queen of the Holy Rood” with the small crowned statue with blue sash that we saw in the “VII Vessels,” in which Mary is represented as “Holy Bride” hence linking her, more broadly, to traditions of uniting the spiritual with the physical. This brings us back to tenets of Christian Neoplatonism and the Augustinian/mystic fusion of land to heavenly archetype, bride to bridegroom across which the pilgrim traverses.127 Grobler directly addresses and encourages the viewer who has been invited to go on their own journey, transcending the visual hermeneutic of the cards to find what Augustine might call an interior presence of God: “You have made it to this point on a solitary journey and you have the inner strength and Divine assistance to continue in the face of challenge and be victorious.”128 The shrines, through the photographic images posited as cards, are meant to function in a similar way—that is, to point beyond themselves to their prototypes, hence sending the viewer on a contemplative pilgrimage. As posited at the beginning of the chapter, and what has hopefully become very clear, is that the small souvenir statues, medals, and objects in Grobler’s shrines function in very much the same way as medieval souvenirs. The context within the Novena series, in particular, resonates with pilgrimage badges sewn into medieval devotional manuscripts as having a specific “mnemonic aspect” and as a “passport to an imaginative pilgrimage experience that would be potentially more efficacious because of these tools.”129 For Grobler, like Fabisch and the pilgrims who carefully sewed physical mementos of their pilgrimages into illuminated psalters and Books of Hours, the making of the objects is a devotional process in and of itself. Her description of the process clarifies this and underscores the idea of seeking to transfer a spirit of a site (or sites) to the shrines, and from the shrines to the photographs: I work with sacred intent. My studio is my sanctuary and sacred space . . . I work while listening to sacred music such as . . . the Lourdes chants and hymns. I burn

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Imaging Pilgrimage frankincense and myrrh which I collect from monasteries and sanctuaries during my pilgrimages. I believe that the items which I have brought back are blessed as they were touched to the altar or icon or holy water in the sanctuaries, churches and shrines. Many of these churches and shrines are built on sacred ground where apparitions of Mother Mary took place. I have personally encountered the incredible fragrance of honey and roses at these sacred sites. These sites have been sacred to people for hundreds of years, through all the eras of different understanding and consciousness—we have felt the sacredness and the Divine Presence in those places. I bring back water from places with healing waters and I sprinkle my items with this water. I have also collected second- and third-class relics over the years and I touch my art to these. I also carry rosaries and other small pieces that I work into my art, along with me on my pilgrimages and take these with to Mass and blessing ceremonies.130

Earlier on, the tradition of making third-class relics was discussed, and this idea of engendering one experience within another is key to Grobler’s process. Grobler acknowledges the values and differences in Eastern Dharma traditions where a saint can inhabit an image (after prānạ pratis ṭ ḥ ā, in which the presence of the life-breath is established) and, in concert with this, the shared Christian and Hindu perspectives of using art as a way “to connect with the love and compassion that is offered to us through the lives and stories of the holy ones.” She describes the reception of her artwork as an “imbib[ing of] the peace and beauty and unconditional love and acceptance which [the viewers] feel radiating from [her] artwork which contains elements of the sacred sites and even of the stories.”131 The objects open a channel to what we have been thinking of as an experience of extratemporal communitas, where the divine is encountered. The viewing of the iconic representation is an entrance into a sacred time and an alternate space, where a transformative encounter is made possible.

Water, water everywhere! The Lourdes replica tradition Grobler’s altars invoke the tradition of building replicas of religious sites. As we have seen, her work is influenced by Catholicism, but also by Bhakti theology. In India, “replica” pilgrimage sites, as they have been called, are an important and growing cultural phenomenon. On the one hand are opportunities for “mental” pilgrimage through art and representation in the Dharma traditions (discussed briefly in Chapter 5, in relation to the labyrinth tradition). The idea of a “mental”

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pilgrimage can perhaps be better understood in the “context of the Hindu practice of worship through imagination (mānasa pūjā, literally ‘mental worship’), through which one imagines the material and visual elements and accoutrements that attend to worship and chants a hymn that provides an oral performance of a full liturgy and ceremony of pūjā”.132 On the other hand are the important holy sites which have been commissioned all over India, including a major twentymillion-dollar project to build a version of the Angkor Wat temple on a site that was visited by the the divine incarnation (avatāra) Rama, in the Vaishali district of north Bihar. The project is meant to expand upon the temple in Cambodia housing other deities including Radha-Krishna, Shiv-Parvati, Ganesh, Surya, and ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu.133 The Govardhan Eco Village (GEV), located 108 kilometers north of Mumbai in the foothills of the Sahyadri mountains, is another important site of pilgrimage. There, devotees of Vrindaban Bihari (a name for Lord Krishna denoting his “playful wandering in Vrindavan forest along with His intimate friends, especially Sri Radha, the personification of devotion”) can have an embodied and multisensory experience of devotion and prayer among replicas of the twelve forests of Vrindavan as well as the major temples of the original sacred site. The entirety of the site is experienced as a new Vrindavan with ārati (the offering of lamps) and other devotions taking place there, including along the river which corresponds to the great Yamuna River (Figure 2.7). As in Catholic pilgrimage practice, sacred text is experienced through embodied practice such as song and dance, often happening on the pilgrimage journey (yātrā)—in this case, “contained” within a microcosmic site.134 The starting point of the forest project was to construct seven “scaleddown structures of seven most important temples for Gaudiya Vaishnavas”: To facilitate our Vrindaban Behari’s pastimes, development of a replica of Vrindavan town (Mathura) is underway at GEV. In tune with the founder’s vision, ISKCON [International Society for Krishna Consciousness] is committed to establish holy places of pilgrimage to benefit the members and society at large. This is exactly the purpose of GEV while also exemplifying a simpler, more natural way of life.135

While bhakti is a devotion of the heart it can also inspire other expressions, like making and building temples and holy places. As the website for the GEV project emphasizes, “The most potent and generous process of bhakti yoga allows a sincere practitioner to recreate a holy place by the process of devotional service, wherever they might be.” Some of the historic precedents for these translations of sites are described, including the replica of Vrindavan built by

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Figure 2.7 “Ārati on the Yamuna” (The offering of lamps on the replica of the sacred Yamuna river, Govardhan Ecovillage), photo: Rita Sherma.

poet-philosopher Srila Rupa Goswami—one of the senior disciples of the founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Caitanya Mahaprabhu—in his native Ramakeli, and the replicas of Shyama-kunda and Radha-kunda built by Bhakti Siddhanata Saraswati Thakur (1874–1937), an important theologian of the modern era, who was the guru of the founder of ISKCON, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. GEV is the latest major effort in the practice of the construction of replicas that flows through this influential lineage from its early history. We have already seen that Grobler’s project is propelled by a deep love and devotion that she seeks to transfer through her art to others; it is also rooted in the traditional practices of both the Dharma and Christian traditions that she is drawing from. Reconstructions of the Lourdes grotto, too, have long appeared as features in monastic and vernacular gardens and landscapes, as well as embedded in consecrated church spaces.136 In addition, there is even an official online grotto. Lourdes has a webcam that pilgrims can use to vicariously visit the site and even light a candle from the comfort of their own homes (people who wish to do so receive an email stating the time and date that their candle was placed in the grotto).

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Fr. Paul Dobberstein, a Catholic priest who planted an enormous complex of grotto shrines in West Bend, Iowa specifically chose the format of the sacred cave to capture the religious and devotional imagination.137 He said that “[t]ruth reaches the mind most easily by way of the senses,” a quotation so apt that it forms the epigraph of the chapter on his “Grottoes of the Holy Book” in Beardsley’s book on environments by visionary artists.138 Perhaps inspired by Dobberstein, Fr. Philip J. Wagner, another Catholic priest (also hailing from Iowa), embarked on his own grotto-building project in the late 1920s in Rudolph, Wisconsin.139 He created a replica of the Lourdes grotto, complete with a version of Fabisch’s niche statue, in honor of the Virgin Mary (who interceded on his behalf, restoring his health after a visit to the site at Massabielle).140 In Washington, DC, besides the Lourdes grotto at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, there is also a scale replica constructed on the grounds of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land of America. It is a faithful reconstruction, complete with a statue based on Fabisch’s interpretation of Bernadette’s vision. Special outdoor Masses are held there on the feast days of the assumption of the Virgin Mary. Their free guidebook emphasizes the aspect of vicarious pilgrimage that the holy sites provide. This is not a new phenomenon by any means and can be traced to projects like Franciscan outdoor Stations of the Cross and, in a similar vein, Fra. Bernardino Caimi’s Sacro Monte project, which gained papal approval in 1481 and contains forty elaborate chapels meant to convey pilgrims through not just the Passion narrative but the entire life of Christ through vividly realistic statuary and mise-en-scène.141 Caimi’s Sacro Monte and Dobberstein’s seven Grottoes142 are both meant to evoke the presence of the divine and allow pilgrims to participate in biblical narratives through an embodied experience.143 Grobler’s project shares a similar goal but through handheld and tactile objects. Just as devotees of the Middle Ages compressed a pilgrimage into an illuminated page, Grobler works on a smaller scale but with the same goal of harnessing the power of the imagination as a means through which to transport the believer to a spiritual realm.144 Another well-documented Lourdes grotto project is on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. The history, form, and function of the site are very similar to the projects described above. Fr. Edward Sorin, the first president of the University, first visited Lourdes in 1873 and joined the American pilgrimage the following year before establishing a grotto on campus in 1878 to create a local access-point for the site in France for the faithful of South Bend and the surrounds.145 Between 2000 and 2006, Dorothy V. Corson compiled journals, documents, letters, and quotations from members of the community

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there in an extensive book, A Cave of Candles, prefaced with a laudatory letter from Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, President Emeritus of the University who writes that “[t]here are literally millions of people that have prayed at the Grotto since it was created many years ago and it becomes a real focus point of prayer for our students.”146 The many stories and anecdotes underscore the presence of the divine felt at such sites, including the following passage from a 1939 issue of the Scholastic, Notre Dame’s student newspaper: And now it is December: The trees that shade her in summer, yawn their nakedness into the cold blue sky . . . The cracking coldness of the season numbs the iron kneelers at her feet and causes lighted candles beyond to sputter and jump casting leaping shadows on the Grotto walls. But she is not alone. Even when the heavy snow will bury the weeds and clutch the tree trunks she will not be without visitors. These Grotto visits are more than tradition at Notre Dame. They are an essential part of her life. Students cannot fail to come to this shrine of Our Lady that was erected so they can stop by at any time to offer her their problems or just to say “hello.”147

What is important to note, and which relates to Grobler’s project and, in some sense, to the latter reception of the niche sculpture is the sense of the presence of the Virgin Mary that these objects inspire. A final example of a Lourdes shrine, this time in a consecrated space, can be found at Our Lady of Victory National Shrine and Basilica, in Lackawanna, New York, which brings us full circle to where I began this chapter (see Plate 2). Fr. Nelson Baker was beloved by his community, often described as a humble man from Buffalo with a strong Marian devotion. He focused on ministering to the poor, particularly after the Wall Street crash of October 1929 that heralded the Great Depression. Due to the work he did in and around Western New York, he became popularly known as “the Apostle of Charity” and “Padre of the Poor” (as he was dubbed by the press) and is currently a candidate for canonization.148 In June of 1874, he was among those in the first American pilgrimage to Lourdes. Upon arrival, he went immediately to the Grotto and began to meditate upon the niche where Fabisch’s sculpture of the Virgin Mary stood. As he gazed in a prayerful state upon the sculpture, he became filled with thankfulness and grace. As his biographer recalls, Fr. Baker brought to mind “the many gifts he had received from God through his Blessed Mother: his vocation, his recovery from a serious illness, his opportunity to be part of the first American pilgrimage [to Lourdes].”149 It was an experience that would stay with him forever. At age seventy-four, to thank the Virgin Mary for all she had done for him, Fr. Baker began a grassroots project of building a full-scale,

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Italianate basilica, inhabited by legions of marble angels, in Lackawanna, a suburb of Buffalo. Inside this church, which is now a National Shrine, is a discrete and prayerful reconstruction of the grotto at Lourdes where he is now interred. In the Our Lady of Victory Lourdes grotto, the narrative is dramatized with the inclusion of a sculpture of Bernadette and a small version of the cathedral at Lourdes that the apparition of the Lady in White urged Bernadette to build. It can be seen, in form and function, as much larger version of Grobler’s tiny boxes. Religious architecture and landscapes have always functioned as temporal reminders of a promised land to come, as mediated through artistic practice. The grottoes and Grobler’s boxes are part of this long lineage of building replicas to provide a lived religious experience for those who could not travel. Grobler’s project and those of priestly grotto-building are aligned with a long history and inextricably linked with each other. In all of these cases, the viewer is not only a pilgrim to Our Lady of Victory, but also to Lourdes, vis-à-vis a medial shift. In creating the grotto, he effectively mapped a European holy site onto his corner of the world, in the consecrated space of Our Lady of Victory basilica. Fr. Baker’s miniature Lourdes still attracts pilgrims; the Basilica estimates that they welcome close to two thousand pilgrims every month. Responses from visitors are a testament to the Gaudium et Spes—Joy and Hope—that fills them, just as Fr. Baker was touched by the grace of the holy spirit at Lourdes. Joseph from Cheektowaga, New York writes, “I feel prayerful, awestruck, and overwhelmed[.] This church takes your breath away, plus so much more.”150 Another anonymous pilgrim commented that she felt a great sense of authenticity at the grotto, which seemed spiritually to transport her to France.151 This exemplifies the extratemporal communitas-through-culture that is described throughout this book, or (in other words) the feeling that pilgrims have when they encounter a sacred object that links them to all those who had come before, and all those who will come again.152 In this case, it was not only the perceived presence of Our Lady of Victory pilgrims, but those who had been to the original site at Lourdes. The spirit has seemed to transfer from site to site.

Conclusion Sacred objects can bring people together, even across temporal boundaries. Writing from within a Catholic context, Chauvet establishes that a symbol is a carrier or vehicle which takes one “into the world of meaning, the world of

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humanity.” He emphasizes that “what characterizes a symbol is not its material value in quantity or quality but its relation with the whole to which it belongs,” using the example of a miniature souvenir version of the Empire State Building, connecting the beholder with New York City.153 I would extend this to include not just the present inhabitants of New York, but also those who have gone before. The city is full of whispers, ghosts, memories, and history. Symbols can also be “heavy with the collective memory of sufferings and hopes,” like the Berlin Wall (Chauvet’s example) or the World Trade Center.154 Such symbol vehicles could be Fabisch’s sculpture of the Virgin Mary, a comfort to many who have suffered. The original, which sits in the grotto at Massabielle, and the souvenir shop copies carry the same resonances because they point to a shared prototype. The material manifestations of Bernadette’s visions, one cold February long ago, shape the imagination of the pilgrim viewer and act as a vessel onto which they “pour their hopes and aspirations.”155 Other examples could be a full-scale grotto diorama or the objects Grobler utilizes in her portable shrines. For Grobler in particular, the experience of communitas is spurred by polysemic sacred objects in moments that can be understood as “ritualized reenactment of correspondences between a religious paradigm and shared human experiences; movement from a mundane center to a sacred periphery which suddenly, transiently, becomes the center for the individual, and axis mundi of . . . faith.”156 Through a medial shift, the centerpiece of the grotto at Lourdes (Fabisch’s sculpture) is linked and mapped on to the periphery—the souvenir objects incorporated into home shrines, ritual praxis, and artworks that may lie outside the boundaries of institutionalized religion. The Turners call this the “temporal transience of communitas; individuality posed against the institutional milieu.”157 The pilgrims examined throughout this book share in common that they collect objects from sacred sites and curate them into assemblages, all the while seeking to engender an experience of sacredness for the viewer. The devotional context that undergirds these works (Catholic in the case of Fabisch, and interreligious with an important Marian component for Grobler) allows the framework of communitas-through-culture to succeed, and is a step closer to the development of a critical lexicon to talk about the efficacy of religious objects in contemporary art.

Notes 1 In a different context, C. Wood has characterized all pilgrimages as reenactments of those that had come before, noting that “[t]he point of interest is where the

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reenactment slips a gear—where there is a medial shift, a transfer of meaning from original building to replicated building to painted building,” in C. S. Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 339; see pp. 8, 20, 35–6. 2 C. McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 160. 3 M. Foster-Campbell, “Pilgrims’ Badges in Late Medieval Devotional Manuscripts,” in S. Blick and L. D. Gelfand (eds.), Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art (Leiden: Brill, 2011), Vol. I, 231. 4 [A]ll over the Catholic pilgrimage world we have seen . . . evidence of belief in the tactile transmission of grace; it is not to be thought of merely as contagious magic, for it is mediated through a carefully learned theology of incarnation which recognizes that selected components of the material order were sanctified through the bodily sacrifice of Jesus—at any rate, de-mythologizing processes have not yet ventured into these holy quarters! V. Turner and E. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 71 [original emphasis]. See also pp. 60, 81, 110. 5 Foster-Campbell, “Pilgrim’s Badges,” 229. 6 The Turners, in Image and Pilgrimage, 143–4, argue that: the outward form of a symbol is connected more closely with its orectic (or emotional/volitional) pole of significance than with its normative (or ideological) pole. Association and analogy connect the sensorily perceived symbol-vehicle, or image, to referents of a dominantly emotional or wishful character . . . New significance may then be generated as devotees associate the particularized, personalized image with their own hopes and sorrows as members of a particular community with a specific history . . . The original signified is not completely replaced, but rather fused with and partially altered by the new signified; or it may coexist with the new as part of a mosaic of meaning . . . It is not idolatrous worship of the signifier at the expense of the signified, that is here in question—as theological polemic has too often asserted. 7 Modern saints call for modern hagiographies. One beloved account is Michel de Saint-Pierre’s Bernadette and Lourdes: The Whole of the Inspiring Story of Our Lady of Lourdes (New York: Doubleday, 1955) and another is the 1943 20th Century Fox film Song of Bernadette (dir. Henry King). 8 R. Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (London: Penguin, 1999), 72. 9 Ibid., 8–9, 14. See also Pius IX’s encyclical, “Ineffabilis Deus: The Immaculate Conception” (Vatican City: The Holy See, 1854).

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10 Floyd Anderson, Apostle of Charity: The Father Nelson Henry Baker Story (Buffalo, NY: Our Lady of Victory Homes of Charity, 1960), 38–47. 11 Since 1862, 6,700 pilgrims have brought cures to the attention of the medical bureau; the Catholic Church has declared 66 of these miraculous. See “Miracles Under the Microscope,” Economist (April 20, 2000). Available online: https://www.economist. com/science-and-technology/2000/04/20/miracles-under-the-microscope. 12 V. A. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984), 28. 13 M. Camille, Gothic Art: Visions and Revelations of the Medieval World (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996), 25. 14 This description of Victorine cycles of vision is in Camille, Gothic Art, 17. 15 S. Chase, Contemplation and Compassion: The Victorine Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003), 79. 16 Ibid., 81. 17 D. Green, Gold in the Crucible: Teresa of Avila and the Western Mystical Tradition (Shaftesbury: Element, 1989), 65. 18 Harris, Lourdes, 72. 19 L’Abbe Bertrin, as cited by J. Bricout, “The Wonders of Lourdes,” Catholic World, a Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science, 89 (1909), 622. 20 G. Bertrin, Lourdes: A History of its Apparitions and Cures (New York: Benziger, 1908), 44 and n.1. 21 M. Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York Vintage, 1983), 249–50. For Bernadette’s descriptions and the disconnect with Fabisch, see also Harris, Lourdes, 57–8, 72. 22 St. Bernadette Soubirous, “Journal Dedicated to the Queen of Heaven” (May 12, 1866) in P. A. McEachern, A Holy Life: The Writings of St. Bernadette of Lourdes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), n.p. 23 Saint-Pierre, Bernadette and Lourdes, 22–3. 24 H. M. Gillett, Famous Shrines of Our Lady, Vol. 1 (London: Samuel Walker, 1949), 204, in Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 229. 25 Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 95. 26 Bertrin, Lourdes, 45. 27 Ibid. 28 L.-J.-M. Cros, SJ, Notre-Dame de Lourdes: récits et mystères (n.p., 1901). 29 Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 250. 30 Ibid. 31 Harris, Lourdes, 74–5. 32 M. Burgum, “I Found the Answer in Lourdes,” Catholic Digest, 20 (1956), 14–16, as cited in A. Harris, “Lourdes and Holistic Spirituality: Contemporary

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Catholicism, the Therapeutic and Religious Thermalism,” Culture and Religion, 14/1 (2013), 28. Pilgrim blog, “Lourdes, France, A Spiritual Healing Place Where Miracles Occur,” https://www.spiritual-healing-artwork-4u.com/spiritual-healing-place.html (accessed March 13, 2019). See D. Dyas, M. Bowman, S. Coleman, J. Jenkins, and T. Sepp, Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals, Past and Present: Canterbury Cathedral Report and Findings, Arts & Humanities Research Council (York: University of York, The Centre for the Study of Christianity & Culture, March 2017), 18. See Introduction. Evidence for this usage is depicted in the stained-glass windows of Canterbury. See, for example, R. Koopmans, “ ‘Water Mixed with the Blood of Thomas’: Contact Relic Manufacture Pictured in Canterbury Cathedral’s Stained Glass,” Journal of Medieval History, 42/5 (2016), 535–58, and E. J. Wells, “Making ‘Sense’ of the Pilgrimage Experience of the Medieval Church,” Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture, 3/2 (2011), 122–46, at 128, n.28: The association between these ampullae and the glass can be explained by their intended function. Both were created to promote the power of Becket’s cult to miraculously heal the sick which was to be achieved via contact with the blood-mixed water contained in the pilgrim ampullae sold at the cathedral. Sarah Blick correctly observed that “the stained glass windows helped form the pilgrim’s experience at Canterbury and the ampullae enabled them to partake in and remember the experience.”

See also S. Blick, “Votives, Images, Interaction and Pilgrimage to the Tomb and Shrine of St. Thomas Becket, Canterbury Cathedral,” in S. Blick and L. Gelfand (eds.), Push Me, Pull You: Art and Devotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2011), II, 21–58; S. Blick, “Comparing Pilgrim Souvenirs and Trinity Chapel Windows at Canterbury Cathedral: An Exploration of Context, Copying, and the Recovery of Lost Stained Glass,” Mirator (September 2001), 1–27, at 5. 37 Foster-Campbell, “Pilgrims’ Badges,” passim. 38 Simony is usually defined as “a deliberate intention of buying or selling for a temporal price such things as are spiritual or annexed unto spirituals” and is forbidden by the Catholic church; see N. Weber, “Simony,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 14 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912). Available online: http://www. newadvent.org/cathen/14001a.htm (accessed October 26, 2020). 39 Warner, Alone of All Her Sex, 310–11. Martin Mosebach, too, addresses the souvenirs of Lourdes, writing, “Kitsch is inauthentic, certainly, but it stands for something authentic. It is the defiant resistance of the poor in an age which despises

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Imaging Pilgrimage their needs,” in Subversive Catholicism: Papacy, Liturgy, Church (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2019), 138. K. Ling, “Lessons from the Beaten Path: Pilgrimage to Lourdes, France,” Go World Travel blog. Available online: http://www.goworldtravel.com/travel-a-pilgrimage-tolourdes-france/ (accessed March 18, 2014). A. Jameson, Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected and a New Edition of a Diary of an Ennuyée (London,: n.p., 1834), ii, 138. Ibid., iv, 6. Sheridan Gilley has used such examples to argue that Jameson’s “Catholic sympathies” had a role in fostering humanitarian sentiment, and could hence be beneficial universally, in S. Gilley, “Victorian Feminism and Catholic Art: The Case of Mrs Jameson,” Studies in Church History, 28 (1992), 385–91. Jameson, Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, iv, 6. Ibid., ii, 138. Ibid., iv, 6. Ibid., ii, 139. Review, Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders, in Sharpe’s London Journal, 13 (January 1851), 16. S. K. Kaufman, Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 82–7. Ibid., 87. Ibid., 14. Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (Vatican City: Vatican, 2001), which has several sections related to Marian devotional practices, speaks to this point (p. 276):

Shrines are often of cultural or heritage significance in themselves. They synthesize numerous expressions of popular culture: historical and artistic monuments, particular linguistic and literary forms, or even musical compositions. In this perspective, shrines can often play an important role in the definition of the cultural identity of a nation. Since a shrine can produce a harmonious synthesis between grace and nature, piety and art, it can also be presented as an example of the via pulchritudinis for the contemplation of the beauty of God, of the mystery of the Tota pulchra, and of the wonderful accomplishment of the Saints. 52 L. A. Karst, in “A New Creation: Translating Lourdes in America,” Liturgy, 32/3 (2017), 31, proposes a model of translation, taken from Michel de Certeau, which “brings to light the ways these spaces, practices, and narratives take on a life and significance of their own, even while these characteristics of the original space exist”; it adds a new and important dimension to a critical lexicon that has included “exports (the movement of the sacred to people), replicas (creating a copy of the

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original), and surrogates (the stand-in of alternate persons or landscapes)” which, as Karst rightly points out, “do not sufficiently account for the rich ways these sacred places and practices are translated around the globe.” Karst writes “exporting sacred objects, creating surrogate landscapes for ritual performance, and replicating sacred environments are all understood as practices of translation that render Lourdes accessible to the faithful beyond the borders of the original shrine; the limits of these practices suggest that translation also entails the creation of a new and distinct sacred space,” “A New Creation,” 31 (added emphasis). I am grateful to my colleague Rita Sherma, Director of the Mira and Ajay Shingal Center for Dharma Studies, Graduate Theological Union, who indicates that “the term used is ‘prānạ pratisṭ ḥ ā’ (prana pratishta), which literally means to ‘establish’ the presence of ‘life/breath’ in the icon. In the ritual, the Divine is invoked and ‘invited’ through mantra, prayer, and liturgy to enter into the image and render it a living locus of the immanent divine.” Thomas Cattoi, in conversation with me, has pointed out the passage in Basil of Caesarea (De Spiritu Sancto, Book 3, 20. Available online: https://www.newadvent. org/fathers/3203.htm) often cited by John Damascene and Theodore the Studite, which “stresses that there is an ontological connection between icons and their prototype (rather than archetype), because every icon ‘epi ton prototypa anapheretai,’ though it is not identical with it (unlike the Eucharist)” (for “Epi ton prototypa anapheretai,” see De Spiritu Sancto, ibid.). H. Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 6. I. Kireevsky as quoted by N. Arseniev in Russian Piety (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 84. For a longer discussion of miraculous images and their use see Belting, Likeness and Presence, introduction and especially pp. 6–7. For a sustained discussion of the subversive potential of the miraculous image due to “direct and unmediated access to divine power,” see Garnett and Rosser, Spectacular Miracles, 17 and passim. F. X. Clooney, SJ, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 9. Clooney also points to Melissa Raphael’s Introducing Thealogy: Discourse on the Goddess (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2000) and lays out the various feminist positions taken when affirming belief in the Goddess or goddesses including acts of historical recovery, “retrieval of pre-Christian traditions . . . a conceptual corrective to overly male discourse on divine and human realities” or, for others still, “reverence for the Goddess” is “a way for sacramentalizing a fresh attitude toward life and life-giving, the body and social relationships”; Raphael as cited in Clooney, 9. Grobler, interview with author, March 29, 2018. Grobler, interview with author, March 30, 2018.

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62 Grobler, interview with author, April 5, 2018. 63 Durga Maa is one of the three major conceptions of God—the other two are masculine visions of Deity. 64 From a description of her piece, “Rosary from Haridwar.” 65 Grobler, interview with author, March 24, 2018. 66 Grobler, interview with author, August 20, 2018. 67 D. Dyas, “To Be a Pilgrim: Tactile Piety, Virtual Pilgrimage and the Experience of Place in Christian Pilgrimage,” in J. Robinson, L. de Beer, and A. Harnden (eds.), Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period (London: British Museum, 2014), 1–4. See also Dyas, “Development of the Cult of the Saints” (York: Christianity and Culture Centre for Medieval Studies, n.d.). Available online: https://www.york.ac.uk/projects/pilgrimage/content/ tradition_ad.html. 68 The Catechism of the Council of Trent, tr. T. A. Buckley (London: 1852): “Question XV: The Virtue of Reliquaries and their Great Power and Efficacy Proved,” 367. 69 W. Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction [1936]” in his Illuminations, ed. H. Arendt and tr. H. Zorn (London: Random House, 1999), as cited in J. Garnett. and G. Rosser, Spectacular Miracles: Transforming Images in Italy from the Renaissance to the Present (London: Reaktion, 2013), 195. 70 Garnett and Rosser, Spectacular Miracles, 195. 71 For a more detailed explanation of enchantment following recent contributions from David Morgan, see pp. 68–9. 72 Braun, Reliquiare, 3 in J. M. H. Smith, “Relics: An Evolving Tradition in Latin Christianity,” in C. Hahn and H. Klein (eds.), Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2015), 44. 73 See Introduction and Chapter 1, pp. 31–2 and p. 53 n. 56. 74 Smith, “Relics,” 42. 75 Ibid., 60. See also p. 53: “Medieval discourses about relics were the product of the educated, clerical, and monastic elite. Participation in the cult of relics was far more widespread, however, and we can establish what a large circle of people regarded as relics by interrogating the evidence of what they collected and treasured.” 76 McDannell, Material Christianity, 26. In other words, and with recourse to Walter Benjamin’s famous essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser have pointed to the “reciprocal relationship between copy and prototype” that can be observed throughout the history of sacred images, Spectacular Miracles, 195. 77 Grobler, correspondence with author, March 26, 2014. 78 Sophia Ehrman, August 13, 2016, online review of one of Grobler’s portable Marian shrines.

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79 Amber T., in correspondence with author as follow-up to a review of Grobler’s artwork, September 25, 2019. 80 Bonnie C., Lincoln, September 29, 2015, from an online review. 81 R. Maniura, Pilgrimage to Images in the Fifteenth Century: The Origins of the Cult of Our Lady of Częstochowa (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004). 82 I am grateful to my colleague, Chris Renz, OP, for pointing out a parallel project by Morena Poltronieri, the co-founder and Director of the Museo dei Tarocchi in Italy, who created a deck of “Photo Collages from a Spiritual Journey to the Black Madonna of Montserrat, Spain.” Available online: http://www.arnellart.com/ museodeitarocchi/msdk43.htm. 83 For more on Balthasar’s authorship, see S. Caldecott, “Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Tarot: A Review of Meditations on the Tarot by Anonymous (Valentin Tomberg)” (and the editorial note, by C. E. Olson), republished on Ignatius Insight (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2018). Available online: http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/ features2007/scaldecott_hubtarot_apr07.asp (accessed October 28, 2020). 84 H. U. von Balthasar, from the preface to the anonymous German edition of Meditations on the Tarot (Die Grossen Arcana Des Tarot, Basel: Herder, 1983), n.p. 85 Endorsements for Meditations on the Tarot (Rockport, MA: Element, 1993), n.p. 86 G. Moakley and B. Bembo, The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza Family: An Iconographic and Historical Study (New York, 1966). 87 For an extensive discussion of the relationship of tarot cards to medieval narratives, see K. Barush, Art and the Sacred Journey in Britain, 1790-1850 (Abingdon: Routledge), 22–34. 88 A. C. de Gébelin, Monde primitif: considéré dans divers objets concernant l’histoire, le blason, les monnoies, les jeux, les voyages des Phéniciens autour du monde, les langues américaines, &c.; ou, Dissertations mêlées (vol. viii, Paris, 1781), tr. M. Dummett, in M. Dummett, The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City (London: Duckworth, 1980), 103. 89 Douce, annotations and marginalia in Gébelin, Monde primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne (Paris, 1777), BodL, Douce G 271–9, viii, 165. 90 Douce, marginalia in Gébelin, viii, 378. 91 S. Hughes, “A New Generation Follows the Pack as Tarot Makes a Comeback,” The Guardian, August 19, 2018. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/ lifeandstyle/2018/aug/19/new-generation-follows-pack-tarot-makes-comeback. 92 Harris, interview with author via email, September 24, 2019. 93 Ibid. 94 Denise Renye, in correspondence with author, September 23, 2019. 95 Sophie Ehrman, Naples, FL, in a correspondence with the author, July 23, 2019. 96 R. P. Maloney, CM, “The Miraculous Medal: Contemporary Catholics on Traditional Devotions,” America: The Jesuit Review (March 17, 2003, np). Available

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online: https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/426/article/miraculous-medal (accessed, May 6, 2019). 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. 99 Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacrament, The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines, sec. 206. 100 H. Grobler, The Mysteries of Mary Tarot Deck: The Inner Mysteries of the Journey of the Soul as Portrayed by Mary (Cape Town: self-published, 2016), 133. 101 Directory of Popular Piety, sec. 206. 102 Grobler, The Mysteries of Mary Tarot Deck, 133. 103 Cited in Grobler, The Mysteries of Mary Tarot Deck, 133. 104 Ibid., 59. 105 M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: Norton, 2002), 29. 106 Harris, interview with author via email, September 24, 2019. 107 Ibid. 108 Grobler, The Mysteries of Mary Tarot Deck, 13–14. 109 S. J. Boss, Empress and Handmaid: On Nature and Gender in the Cult of the Virgin Mary (London: Cassell, 2000), 31–2. 110 Boss, Empress and Handmaid, 114, n.27. 111 Grobler, The Mysteries of Mary Tarot Deck, 65. 112 Ibid., 70. 113 Ibid., 145. 114 Ibid. 115 Warner, citing one reformer who was repeating “the vulgar stricture of the iconoclast Emperor Constantine V in the 8th century,” Alone of All Her Sex, 251. 116 Grobler, The Mysteries of Mary Tarot Deck, 12-13. 117 E. Saillens, Nos Vierges Noires: Leurs origines (Paris: Les Éditions Universelles, 1945), 238–44 as cited in S. J. Boss, “Black Madonnas,” in her Mary: The Complete Resource (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 469–70. 118 Boss, “Black Madonnas,” 470. 119 I mentioned the Black Madonna of Częstochowa and Our Lady of Rocamadour earlier; see Chapter 4 for a discussion of the Black Madonna of Montserrat. 120 D. Vasco, “Race, Religion, and the Black Madonna,” Wellcome Collection article on the Medicine Man permanent exhibition (March 14, 2018). Available online: https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/WpmW_yUAAKUUF6mV (accessed November 24, 2020). 121 J. Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 26; see also R. J. Weems, “Song of Songs” in C. Newsom and S. H. Ringe (eds.), Women’s Bible Commentary (Louisville, KY:

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Westminster/Knox, 1992), 167. Weems argues that this statement is about ethnicity in contrast to many other scholars who have posited that her skin has darkened from working outside, which could be seen as a parallel to not-always-accurate scholarship that posits the darkening of the images is due to smoke and soot. Thank you to James Nati for bringing this source to my attention. It should be noted that the controversial restoration of the Marian image at Chartres revealed a lighter-skinned image, but many Black Madonnas were intentionally of darker woods, like walnut (Rocamadour, Tongeren Limburg, Marsat/Puy-de-Dome), or metal. See also V. Krymow, “Black Madonnas: Still Black and Still Venerated” (which includes a list of Marian images, an extensive bibliography, and photographs), Marian Library, University of Dayton. Available online: https://udayton.edu/imri/mary/b/black-madonnas-in-variouscountries.php (accessed November 24, 2020); and Boss, “Black Madonnas.” 122 Email exchange with Grobler October 18, 2020. 123 A. D. Honegan has argued that “Doox’s portrait of Mary and Jesus as Brown and Black provokes a collective reexamination of the role of race and appearance within various social sectors of the United States and beyond, such as: faith-based contexts of biblical and allegorical exegesis, theology, and practice; public space and dialogue; and academic discourse on race, religion, and the arts,” in “Theological Reflections on Mark Doox’s Icon Our Lady of Ferguson and All Who Have Died of Gun Violence (2016),” a paper delivered at the National Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Bible and Visual Art Program Unit, November 23, 2019 (cited here with kind permission). 124 H. U. von Balthasar, “The Mass, a Sacrifice of the Church?” in his Explorations in Theology III: Creator Spirit (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 224. 125 Balthasar, Marie et Eglise, as summarized in J. Heft, “Marian Themes in the Writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Marian Studies, 31, art. 9. Available online: https:// ecommons.udayton.edu/marian_studies/vol31/iss1/9. Kevin Tortorelli reads Balthasar’s theology of the three Marys as a basic summary of his ecclesiology encompassing the three elements of contemplation, witness, and mission, emphasizing that “[t]hese terms express the fact that one is in agreement (the Johannine ‘indifference’) with the sacrifice of the Crucified Lord and that this agreement is basically feminine,” K. Tortorelli, OFM, Christology with Lonergan and Balthasar (Cambridge: Melrose Books), 31–2. 126 Balthasar, “The Mass, a Sacrifice of the Church?” 228 (my emphasis). 127 Grobler, The Mysteries of Mary Tarot Deck, 101. 128 Ibid., 85. 129 S. Blick and L. D. Gelfand, “Imagined Pilgrimage and Spiritual Tourism,” in the introduction to their edited Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, Vol. I (Leiden: Brill, 2011), xlix; and Foster-Campbell, “Pilgrims’ Badges,” 227–74.

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130 Grobler in a correspondence with author, August 23, 2018. 131 Ibid. 132 Rita D. Sherma, Radical Immanence: A Hindu Liberative Ecological Theology of the Divine Feminine (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming). 133 A. Tewary, “India Starts Angkor Wat Replica in Bihar,” BBC News (March 5, 2012). Available online: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-17259496 (accessed September 30, 2019). 134 See Introduction for the idea of earthly pilgrimage as a microcosm of the pilgrimage of life, and its relationship to scripture. I am indebted to my colleague, Rita Sherma, for sharing her photographs and experiences at GEV, and providing some of this background information. For a detailed study of expressions of sacred text through embodied experience in the Hindu tradition, see R. M. Gupta and K. R. Valpey (eds.), The Bhāgavata Purāna: ̣ Sacred Text and Living Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). For images and digital plans of the Vrindavan site at GEV, see: http://www.vrindabanbehari.com 135 See “Vrindavan Forest” and “Recreating Vrindavan at GEV”: http://www. vrindabanbehari.com 136 My objective is to bring Grobler’s contemporary, portable shrines in conversation with these grotto reconstructions rather than to provide a comprehensive history of other sites. There have been excellent studies of the theories and devotional impulses which underlie these projects. For their nineteenth-century American context see McDannell, Material Christianity (especially “Lourdes Water and American Catholicism”). For a history of the Notre Dame grotto, see D. V. Corson, A Cave of Candles: The Story Behind Notre Dame’s Grotto—The Spirit, History, Legends, and Lore of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s (Nappanee, IN: Evangel Publishing House, 2006); and Karst, “A New Creation.” 137 J. Beardsley, Gardens of Revelation: Environments by Visionary Artists (New York: Abbeville Press, 2003), 101–3. 138 Ibid., 101, 113: “although not explicitly evoked, Dobberstein’s writing resounds with centuries of church teachings about ornamentation. Early Christian doctrine suggested that a knowledge of God might be achieved through meditation on His material creations; the wonder of the physical world could suggest the perfection of the spiritual realm.” 139 Ibid., 117. 140 Rudolph Grotto Gardens website, “A Promise Fulfilled”: http://www.rudolphgrotto. org/history.php (accessed March 27, 2019). 141 Beardsley, Gardens of Revelation, 110. 142 Ibid., 195, n.5: “There are officially nine grottoes at West Bend, which are collectively known as the Grotto of the Redemption; seven are by Dobberstein. Two of these

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spaces are called grottoes although they are open to the sky: the Garden of Eden and the Stations of the Cross.” 143 Ibid., 111. 144 Grobler in a correspondence with the author, September 23, 2018. 145 Karst, “A New Creation,” 30. 146 Letter from Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, to Dorothy V. Corson, March 13, 2006 in Corson, A Cave of Candles, n.p. 147 Scholastic, vol. 73, January 1, 1839, pp. 9, 26 as cited in Corson, A Cave of Candles, 128. 148 Baker was granted the status of “venerable” by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in 2011. 149 Anderson, Apostle of Charity, 44. 150 From surveys distributed to pilgrims and visitors to Our Lady of Victory Basilica, Lackawanna, NY between March and April 2015. 151 Ibid., OLV surveys. 152 See Introduction, pp. 5–6. 153 L.-M. Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), 69–75. 154 Ibid., 75. This will be discussed further especially in Chapter 4 in relation to objects from Ecuador, which Insuaste sees as a landscape of trauma and healing. 155 S. Coleman. and J. Elsner, “Contesting Pilgrimage: Current Views and Future Directions,” Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 15/3 (1991), 70 and J. Eade and M. Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (Urbana, IL: Illinois University Press, 1991), 15. 156 Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 254. 157 Ibid.

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England → Jerusalem Rewilding Through Pilgrimage Song and Chant

Jerry Garcia, guitarist and founding member of the Grateful Dead, once said that “We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.”1 Previous chapters have considered the power of art and the built environment as a site of communitasthrough-culture where, through the act of viewing, the beholder connects to those who have seen the object, person, or image before and those who will see the image in the future. As Garcia surmised, it is possible that music can have the same effect in “encapsulating” a sense of the spirit of a place. The case study here is the British Pilgrimage Trust, a thriving charitable organization2 which seeks to activate sacred spaces and evoke cultural memory by leading pilgrims in singing and walking along ancient British paths. It is a project that has been described as “a proven method to cultivate fearlessness, freedom, discipline and joy.”3 The BPT is an ecumenical and interreligious organization, open to those of any faith or none, and predicated on the belief that “everyone can make pilgrimage among Britain’s spiritual landscape . . . promot[ing] open accessibility to pilgrimage in Britain, and to holy places found upon the path.” Co-founders William Parsons and Guy Hayward discovered a mutual interest in both singing and a “sense of place” (pace Seamus Heaney)—that is, the sacramental nature of a landscape imbued with signs, “implying a system of reality beyond the visible realities”; a union of the geographies of the natural landscape and those of the imagination.4 As Parsons has described, pilgrimage can be a way to connect the holy places of the landscape, “the hilltops, ancient trees, stone circles and river sources, as well as the chapels, churches, and cathedrals (of all faiths),” which he sees as a “single unified pilgrimage landscape.” Music and pilgrimage both are part of a “common inheritance,” crossing cultures, belief, and temporalities.5 Through a number of examples of specific BPT pilgrimages, I will aim to tease out what it means to travel through a song into a faraway landscape, and through a faraway landscape into song. 107

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In critical literature on music, the ideas of transcendence and re-enchantment are coming back to the fore, as they have in the field of art history. As Gavin Hopps and David Brown have recently posited in The Extravagance of Music (2018), “one of the most surprising features of postmodernity is the way its radical epistemological skepticism appears to have precipitated an openness to mystery and a questioning of secularism’s confident exclusions.”6 They argue, ultimately, that “music may have an ineffable dimension, without banishing it to a sequestered autonomy . . . without denying its social construction and also without suppressing its ‘human interest’ ”—and that there exists “a possibility of a religious form of ‘critical musicology’ .”7 The role of sound as a container of spirit cannot be overlooked, and hence his chapter continues to draw on the art historical and anthropological approaches of this book, and especially a transtemporal approach to the idea of communitas-through-culture.8 On BPT pilgrimages, visual culture, landscape, and melody function in tandem to “bring the past into the present.”9

Songs of the Old Way One foggy morning in June of 2017, I joined Parsons, Hayward (Figure 3.1), and a band of merry wanderers for a pilgrimage along a portion of the Old Way, a 250-mile route from Southampton to Canterbury based on the Gough Map of c. 1360 (which Bodleian researchers are now placing closer to 1400).10 We were to travel from Battle Abbey toward Rye—a two-day journey from 2017 into “1066 country,” “through old disputed England”: We follow footpaths and beautiful trails through woods and marshes, on longforgotten shorelines, by brooks and streams, through a world rich with colour life and beauty. Our destination is Rye—a holy hill unchanged since Medieval days, crowned with the ramshackle glory of St Mary’s, the “Cathedral of Sussex.” We sleep in the fields—with the option of lux (see here for further details). We walk. 13 miles per day, for two days. This pilgrimage is open to all. Bring your own beliefs. All are welcome.11

I met my fellow pilgrims at the café in Battle early in the morning; the day was cold, and I was warming my hands with a huge mug of coffee. Many had encountered the pilgrimage through the BPT website, and the cryptic note that their “fellow pilgrim companions” would likely be a “mixed bunch—albeit with a

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Figure 3.1 William Parsons and Guy Hayward (founders of British Pilgrimage Trust), outside William Blake’s Cottage in Felpham (October 2016). Photo: William Parsons, used with permission.

certain shared questing glint to their eye. Pilgrims tend to have very little, and almost everything, in common. You’ll see what we mean.”12 The mood was festive, like waiting for the bus the day of a school field trip, when things were bound to be just a bit different and perhaps out of the ordinary. The Turners discuss pilgrimage as a liminoid phenomenon; it is non-routine with aspects of play and fun, often taken up as a voluntary activity (in today’s complex society, in any event) during leisure time.13 That being said, there is also room for the apophatic during these liminoid experiences; what Deborah Ross has described, in her thoughtful introduction to the Turners’ canonical book, as the “thin places within Celtic spirituality where the two worlds meet, are places of learning; indeed, the in-between state of the pilgrim’s journey is a place where liminal wisdom is communicated.”14 That morning, as the pilgrims tightened their shoelaces and inquired where their companions had traveled from to get to Battle, and what their spouses did, and whether they take milk in their tea, I wondered when 2017 would dip into 1066 and if and how the liminal would unfold. Looking out the steamed-up café window at the moldering stones of the abbey as Hayward arrived with his staff, such an encounter seemed not only possible, but plausible.

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As a professor of art and religion who has taken groups of graduate students on pilgrimages in Spain and elsewhere, there was a warm familiarity to the happy anticipation of a group adventure about to unfold into communitas (in the traditional, Turnerian sense of the word). We started by heading through the gatehouse and then circumambulating the Benedictine Abbey which was built on the site of the Battle of Hastings. It was suggested by our guides that the we lay our hands and foreheads on the cool, mossy stone of the architectural ruins (normally, this would have been the apse of the church, were it still standing); my companions seemed to have a little trepidation at first but participated in this ritual behavior. Some stifled smiles or nervously laughed, others were more immediately shy and serious, closing their eyes to the watchful and curious glances of the others. Shepherded along by Hayward, we then spent a moment listening to a bit of history in the old novices’ common room, contributing to the feeling of a school field trip. At the site of the burial of King Harold, the grass had turned a remarkable green as the color of the sky deepened and rain began to fall. Hayward led the pilgrims in a simple round that he had written: we quieted ourselves and, in a spirit of thanksgiving, were encouraged to sing together at the site of ruins. Somewhat shyly at first and then with a bit more gusto, I joined in: We come as guests and thank our hosts living in this place. Singing here, we honour you please bless us with your grace.

At Hayward’s bidding, we pressed our hands, palms-flat, on the plaque mounted over the spot where Harold had fallen in 1066, reputedly the site of the old altar. “I appreciate the ritual of foreheads on the altar wall,” reflected one of the pilgrims. “It gave me the opportunity to feel some grief that I am working through. Thank you.”15 With each song sung and each relic touched, the more the pilgrims seemed slowly to open up to the possibility of an experience of communitas—this time, communitas-through-culture—and temporal dislocation. Making physical contact with relics of saints (or what Turner and Turner have called a “tactile transmission of grace”) is not an unusual practice for many Catholic devotees the world over, as we have seen earlier.16 Although Battle was once a Catholic site (with a dedication to St. Martin of Tours, in fact, and a standing dormitory where the monks once lived, chanted, and slept), it hasn’t been for a long time; and although Canterbury was once a Catholic pilgrimage,

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England is now richly multi-religious and BPT participants very much have their own reasons for wanting to participate in these intentional journeys, with plenty of room for spiritual growth and encounter. One recent BPT pilgrim group consisted of a man who wanted to reframe negative experiences he had at the sites that would be visited, a woman who was there as part of her shamanic training, a raver who had been up clubbing the previous night and had stumbled upon the group, a banker who wanted to reconnect with nature, and an American cyclist and university administrator with a penchant for history.17 Ritual is a key component in crossing the threshold from the everyday into the liminality of sacred spaces, even for the non-religious person. Battle Abbey is impregnated with the traces of history, both literally (a Norman monument) and as perceived in moments of prayer or silence—a pilgrimage for the historian as much as it is for a mourning descendent of one of those who lost their life there, or for a devotee of St. Martin of Tours (who himself was, in fact, a pilgrim). Melody and lyric can demarcate these thresholds and invite the pilgrim in, just as flags and stone demarcate the boundaries of a ruined abbey. Still, there are certain cultural markers of a history of Reformation, the wounds of which resurfaced in modern times during discussions surrounding the Catholic Relief Acts and the Oxford Movement. Relics, images, and pilgrimages were often touchstones of fierce debate not just among theologians, but in the popular press. The idea of “tactile transmission” of blessings predates Christianity, of course, and even crosses a diversity of religious traditions; for some, this is a welcome connection to a distant past and ancient religious heritage. For some conservative Christians and Evangelicals in Britain, it is still considered unbiblical (regardless of scriptural stories of miraculous healings—for example, the Christians of Ephesus who used handkerchiefs touched by St. Paul’s skin to heal the sick in Acts 19:11–12)—and hence “superstitious.” This was evinced not long ago when the annual pilgrimage I participated in at St. Winefride’s Well in Wales. The Bridgettine sisters run the guesthouse adjacent to the Well and participate in the annual procession, which is attended by many pilgrims from the Irish Traveler community. It is a simple rosary walk down the hill to the Well, followed by Mass, and was picketed on charges of idolatry (Figure 3.2). The Battle Abbey pilgrims who comprised a group of Christians, non-believers, and spiritual seekers seemed willing to accept the invitation to “touch and see” for themselves; our religious backgrounds were not discussed outright, although we did touch on aspects of belief and experience during the long walk.

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Figure 3.2 Picketer protesting a pilgrimage at St. Winefride’s Well, Wales (June 2012). Photo: Author.

Music as a healing relic: the songs of Godric, hermit saint of Finchale The idea of music as a relic seems to mitigate the nervousness associated with this kind of tactility, appealing more to the slice of the British public that come along on BPT pilgrimages. In the previous chapter, I discussed the idea of the translation from holy object to image in relation to popular belief in the efficacy of contact relics, such as a prayer card which has come into contact with the body of a saint. Like relics, music can serve as a way to activate spaces and the senses. There are specific songs that resonate with the landscape and holy sites

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along BPT pilgrimages, and the following sections will consider two as case studies; the hymns “Sainte Marie Virgine” of Godric, the “Hermit Saint of Finchale” (d. 1170),18 associated with the Old Way, and, later, “Jerusalem.” In the cases examined later, the holiness associated with the people (Godric, Blake, Becket . . .) and landscape of Britain has been diffused in and through material and aural culture. According to the hagiographies, Godric was a merchant seaman (possibly a pirate) and accrued great wealth before giving everything away to take on the life of a pilgrim. He traveled to a number of holy places, including Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela. Godric settled eventually in Durham, England into a visionary and ascetic life where he protected deer and fed visitors with salmon from his ponds. He also corresponded with St. Thomas Becket through a messenger from Westminster.19 As a thirteenth-century extract from the Life of Godric recounts, a hymn was given to Godric by the Virgin Mary, who appeared to him along with St. Mary Magdalen, and told him that he could sing it in any time of need: The blessed mother of God, Mary, with the blessed Mary Magdalene appeared visibly to St. Godric, and taught him that song with its own melody, and advising him that whenever he should be tired by sorrows, or should fear that temptation or weariness would overcome him, he should remember to soothe and console himself with the sweetness of this song. “Henceforth”, she said, “when you invoke me with this little prayer, you will immediately obtain your gracious helper”.20

The Virgin Mary is often invoked for her maternal protection, and the lyrics of the hymn reinforce this: Holy Mary, virgin, mother of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, receive, shield, help your Godric . . . Holy Mary, Christ’s bower bring me to joy with God himself.21

As Margaret Coombe has pointed out, “at every stage in Godric’s vita where he is truly in contact with God, the Virgin, [etc.] . . . music or song are present and we are invited to conclude that it was through music alone that Godric communicated with God.”22 The episode appears in several biographies and the song lyrics are preserved in manuscript form in the places where the story is recounted.23 Similar miracle stories suggest a long-standing connection between Canterbury, Marian devotion, and Marian hymns. For example, St. Dunstan, archbishop of

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Canterbury, spent long hours in an oratory there dedicated to the Virgin Mary. She appeared to him singing, and eventually he joined in, imploring God to “save the race of Christians who are pilgrims on this earth.” Versions of the story are recounted by William of Malmesbury in his Miracles of the Virgin, written c. 1135 and by Nigel of Canterbury (d. 1206).24 Godric is thought to have passed through Canterbury on his journey from England to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain (the route is now known as the Camino Inglés). The song has become an integral feature of BPT pilgrimages, both along the Old Way to Canterbury (due to Godric’s connection to Becket) and at sites associated with the Hermit’s life. Hayward pointed out to me that after he was murdered by the knights of Henry II, Becket’s body rested not far from the image of the Virgin Mary in the chapel, and suggested that Becket might have even heard the “Sainte Marie Virgine” hymn at some point. While Godric’s vita makes no mention of this possibility, it does relate how Godric corresponded with Becket via a messenger from Westminster who first appeared around the time Becket was elected archbishop of Canterbury. Godric told the visitor that he had seen Becket in his dreams and would be able to recognize him in a crowd, begging for a blessing and expressing a wish to send him secret messages.25 Becket asked for Godric’s prayers in return and before his death acknowledged that Godric’s predictions had been fulfilled.26 Hayward has traveled with the song from Finchale to Canterbury Cathedral, singing it at sites along the way. These included both the Marian chapel and the site of Becket’s martyrdom: Canterbury has a very strong resonance for that song—there’s something about singing a song about Mary, or maybe from Mary, that is directly contemporary with the age of the chapel itself . . . it’s as close as you can get to that age. The feeling of Mary is really strong in [the Lady Chapel], more so than most Mary spaces—it is the inner heart of Canterbury cathedral; a heart space, not a head space.27

He described the feeling of the song in the Our Lady of Canterbury Undercroft Chapel as going into the heart and downward, whereas at the site of the martyrdom of Becket it went up through the crown of the head, as in a Buddhist meditation practice he encountered through his work with Jill Purce.28 Purce’s work has been formative for Hayward, especially the healing method she developed using voice, which underscored the capacity of song to lead to greater spiritual awareness.29 She has explored this in various ways and contexts,

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including a fellowship in the Biophysics Department at Kings College London, where she focused on the “relationship between art, science and spirituality,” and by studying chant at Gyutö Monastery in the Himalayas. Part of her praxis engages chant and ceremony to “heal the resonant fields of family and ancestors, unlocking persistent patterns so that order and joy is restored.”30 The theory of “resonance” that Hayward describes in relation to Godric’s song (see earlier) also draws from the work of Rupert Sheldrake, a founding patron the BPT, who contends that chant and song contains a “resonance” that extends across time and is activated by ritual practice, which “connect present participants with all those who have done the ritual before, right back to the first time it was performed” due to the principle of similarity of form.31 Sheldrake has applied this theory to holy places, in which the pilgrim encounters the “same stimuli as those who have been there before, and therefore come into resonance with them.” These spaces of encounter facilitate a connection to those who have been “inspired, uplifted, and healed there” through time, and “grow in holiness through people’s experiences with them.”32 This idea of connection to the past through the channels of landscape into music and vice versa have been integral to the work of the BPT. The Godric hymn can be situated in this framework; it has been used regularly in liturgies at Finchale and the BPT seems to have brought it back to Canterbury, where it had not been sung in recent memory prior to their efforts.33 For those who sing and hear it, the hymn becomes connected to a memory of the place. As one pilgrim recounted, “The sounds, sensations and impressions continue to resonate and I feel blessed.”34 In this way, the song functions as a sort of aidemémoire of the pilgrimage experience, in the same way a souvenir might. Pilgrim badges and ampullae were bought by pilgrims at markets surrounding the shrines and were often worn on hats or clothing. Particularly popular at medieval Canterbury, for about a century after Becket’s martyrdom, were ampullae made of metal (usually lead) which was thin and pliable enough to be pinched shut. Pilgrims used these to collect “Canterbury water,” believed to contain a trace of Becket’s blood. Rachel Koopmans has considered the use of “relic waters” in the early thirteenth century, and the particular healing capacities of the water associated with Becket as portrayed on glass in the Trinity chapel.35 The mass production and sale of these souvenirs in the Middle Ages, as today, had several purposes; the badges and ampullae served as aids to devotion, to spur mental pilgrimage, and as a souvenir or a hopeful reminder of some future journey. Holy water stored inside (as in the case of the Becket ampullae) could be

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administered for healing.36 Compatible with the belief in Becket water as a blessing and a balm in the Middle Ages, another pilgrim exclaimed that that songs and sites themselves “seemed to possess benign agency.”37 The spiritual experience that Hayward has felt while singing the song, and which is reflected in the testimonials of BPT pilgrims, is certainly in line with Godric’s description of closeness to the divine, especially in the Undercroft Chapel where Hayward strongly perceived the Virgin Mary as a mother and protectress. Whether or not the messenger heard Godric singing is secondary to the spiritual connection linking Godric and Becket, and the fact that the song seems to activate the space of the cathedral. Because this idea is pivotal to the work of the BPT, it is worth quoting Hayward at length: [Parsons] helped me discover that songs have a “home”. Songs make more sense when sung in their natural habitat . . . Every song is from somewhere, either in terms of where it was composed or where inspiration first reached its creator . . . and its essence can be transmitted from one person to another, who then can carry it to another place and embed the song there. Whatever song you may sing in its “home”—which means either its place of origin or, alternatively, any appropriate place or context—with each performance the precise moment of time and place, and combination of elements like weather, the light of day, where you are standing, what you can see, who you are with, which animals are around etc. increase the value of each “performance”—it will never be quite the same again. Furthermore, all these factors work together to strengthen your memory of the song by giving it a rich context, and will inform your future performances.38

In the case of the Sainte Marie hymn, there are multiple levels of context. Some are cultural and some are spiritual, predicated on belief. The hymn is connected first and foremost to the Virgin Mary, and through her it traveled to Godric, and then (hundreds of years later) has been returned to the interior of cathedral spaces associated with Godric in the imagination (Canterbury) or history (Finchale). A connection can be drawn between medieval and modern sensibilities; in the distant past, and still today, relics are objects that “derive their meaning from the subjective understanding of those who . . . cherished them.”39 The Sainte Marie hymn was given to Godric as a protective prayer to be invoked in times of need to “shield and help” and to “bring . . . to joy with God,” and hence reflects the use of these other religious pilgrimage objects. Helen Deeming makes a similar point about the song in its original context: the scribe inserted the music directly into the text where Godric’s divine experiences are described, hence “importance

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is attached to the song being the very words of St. Godric himself: by inserting these words into an utterance of the saint, the scribe restored them to the authority with which they were endowed by the vision from episode A in Reginald’s life.”40 The manuscript version has the immediacy of a pilgrimage souvenir sewn onto a page (as described in Chapter 2) but with the additional possibility of being attached to a melody which can be vocalized, hence carrying a “trace” of the spirit, or holiness, of Godric’s utterance. James Rankin rejected the idea that Godric’s poem was miraculously inspired, but argued that it still has an apotropaic capacity, even outside of its religious context. He connected Godric’s songs “in form and purpose” to “charm or incantation type of verse” such as a specific Anglo-Saxon bee charm.41 To do so, though, is to miss the point of the song as a symbol or (as the Canterbury report posits in association with the centrality of Becket even in the absence of his remains) “an open ‘vessel’ for the beholder’s assumptions and aspirations.”42 Singing “Sainte Marie” at Canterbury is a way to facilitate this, not translated through landscape but through song and into the space of the cathedral. Drawing from her own experiences as a musicologist and long-time nurse and clinician, Ruth Stanley has emphasized that “Ancient cultures believed the voice held special mystical powers and seamlessly traveled through temporal and spiritual realms to facilitate healing” and that “[v]ocalizing served as a bridge between worlds and could be used directly to impact mental, physical, and emotional well-being.”43 Music, like the Becket water collected by pilgrims, is also perceived as having the capacity to heal. The BPT’s intentional engagement with objects and music as sites of communitas echoes the themes that emerged from the extensive interviews that were undertaken as part of the multi-year Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals, Past and Present project conceived by Dee Dyas and Marion Bowman.44 The detailed report on Canterbury comprises thematic sections, including historical views, contemporary observations, and “opportunities to explore.” Recurring topics included the agency of the cathedral space itself (for example, one guide described the atmosphere as so potent that “one receives its impact as tangibly as if a hand had touched one’s face” and a pilgrim commented on the “very powerful connection with the numinous”); the perceived presence of past pilgrims and Becket himself (as described in one of the questionnaires); and the importance of objects and ritual as helping to mediate the experience of pilgrims.45 To contribute a personal anecdote, on an atmospheric, rainy afternoon in June 2019 (while researching this chapter) I took up a post on a rickety wooden chair in

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the corner of the chapel of Becket’s martyrdom. I turned my attention from the arresting architecture to the activities of the visitors. After about an hour, the organ boomed for choir practice and it was only then that I observed the incoming visitors using the space for meditation and prayer: some knelt, some paused for longer to look at the tracery on the vaults or at the floor where Becket fell. It was music that activated the site and carried the memory of the events of the martyrdom. “Presence, proximity and the transferability of sacredness” remain today key factors for visitors who, like their medieval predecessors, still have a desire to take away souvenir objects which engender “a powerful combination of medieval and modern sensibilities.”46 Godric’s song functions as a vessel of memory on BPT pilgrimages as it is sung and repeated in various holy places and spaces, including the chapels of Canterbury dedicated to the Virgin Mary and Becket. Along with songs like Godric’s relic-hymn, objects and touch still form an integral part of the ritual practices that are encouraged on BPT pilgrimages, facilitating a fully embodied experience. In some cases, the aural and the material function together. Before we set off on our journey from Battle to Rye, we were shown an old, rambling tree against which lay several pilgrim staffs, one for each of us, and we were told to choose one—or that perhaps the staff would choose us. They were, in this case, already cut to size, but sometimes the BPT invites pilgrims to whittle their own staffs, create a handle, and chamfer the wood (which Parsons explained is the process of cutting the end to prevent splits). Some were tentative at first, hefting a staff in their hand before rejecting it and choosing another—others were quietly confident and kept the first staff that they touched. For the BPT, the wooden walking staff has a multifold purpose as both sound (or producer of sound) and as visual symbol; it allows the person holding it to really feel like a pilgrim as they take on one of the most recognizable, historic markers of an intentional walker (Figure 3.3). The rhythm of the fall of the staff, of tapping another pilgrim’s staff in a greeting is seen by Parsons as “communitas through common tool-use/uniform.”47 It is both democratizing and demarcating; with a wooden staff, one becomes a pilgrim and walker. Saints are usually portrayed with symbolic attributes in portraiture; palms to indicate martyrdom, a dog for fidelity to God. Pilgrims are, too—with scrips (satchels in which to carry belongings), cloaks, staffs, or scallop shells. We introduced ourselves that morning by gathering in a circle and saying our own name before making direct eye contact with our pilgrim companions, one by one. There was more nervous laughing, repressed smiles, and foot-shuffling as

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Figure 3.3 “Staff meeting.” Photo: William Parsons.

we silently looked into each other’s eyes for a second that seemed to last an eternity. There was also, likely, a cultural component at work here; as Parsons said in a later correspondence: Let’s not forget, it’s a group of total strangers. Sometimes with small sub-groups of people who already know each other. It’s not easy to find your place. It never is. We’re not well trained at mixing in Britain. Look at the issues of eye-contact on the tube. Other people scare people. We enjoy the gradual thawing of this. Slow is good.48

The gradual unfolding allowed us to open up to each other and also to the experiences that we would encounter; John Eric Killinger wrote that “communitas . . . extends our gaze, including our backward gaze or regard.”49 In this case, our gaze was extended outward and inward, through the corporal eyes of our body and beyond. By the time we set off on the old Canterbury route through the fields and forests of Sussex, the rain was falling heavily and I was quickly soaked, having been far too optimistic about the weather. We were soon almost fully in liminoid mode—laughing, singing, and opening up to each other, even in spite of our sloshing boots. By the time that Parsons and Hayward suggested to everyone that we drink (filtered) water from a puddle in the forest, nearly everyone

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seemed willing to partake of this activity. We paused to sing a peregrine water song (this time by Parsons) before sharing a communal cup: Water flows, life is given Rises from Earth, falls from Heaven Water flowing So we sing: Bless the Holy Spring.

Through song, and through the sharing of drink, there is connection to the past, and to the landscape. Parsons writes: British people often don’t know their land very well. We jet to distant climes and often forget the beauty and mystery of our own islands. But we can rediscover exotic Britain by avoiding roads, and travelling upon secret green passages known as public footpaths.50

There was silence and then some quiet astonishment about the taste of the water (minerally, earthy, and clean was our mutual conclusion) and questions about the high-tech filtration system in use. The BPT promotes the idea that all water is sacred, and aspects of singing, touch, silence, and offering a gift of song to the water source all form a part of their ecumenical project of expressing gratitude to creation and creator, or whatever belief is brought with the individual pilgrim. One of the pilgrims lent me a plastic raincoat as we gathered closer together, like cattle in a winter field. The fog concealed anything modern from our vantage point—and so whenever Hayward began to lead us in song it very much did feel like an incantation to “bring the past into the present.” In fact, in preparing this chapter, I wrote to Hayward to remind me what the lyrics were of the simple round he wrote, recounted earlier (“We come as guests . . .”) and he responded with a recording. Listening to that melody, which I had not heard since a year prior, brought me right back to that foggy morning among the ruins. In the same way, with a little imagination, the presence of past can be felt, just as in the case of an enclosed cathedral during the endless liturgy that extends through and across, as the words of the Mass proclaim, the fullness of time.

A pilgrimage for Jerusalem: “And did those feet”? The thick description of the BPT ritual practices provided earlier is important in establishing the idea that music can contain a trace of history or a perceived

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Figure 3.4 William Blake, “And did those feet . . .,” detail: Preface to “Milton, A Poem” (c. 1804–11), illuminated printing, Huntington Museum.

spirit of the landscape and events depicted, leading to an embodied experience. The BPT’s “Jerusalem” pilgrimage in October of 2016 (Plate 8) centered around the words that Blake originally penned as a preface to his illuminated book Milton, A Poem (1804–8), and the music that Sir Hubert Parry put them to later (in the early twentieth century). The pilgrimage would mark the one-hundredth birthday of the song (Figure 3.4): And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen! And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire!

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I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.51

The poet, musician, and Guardian journalist Alan Franks, who was part of this pilgrimage, wrote that “the group that [he] joined were marching to Jerusalem for Heaven’s sake, albeit the song rather than the place.”52 The companions included an ebbing and flowing group of artists, musicians, writers, and ecologists including James Keay, the music director for Giffords Circus, Mexico-based textile designer Kitty Rice, and artist and writer India Windsor-Clive. The remainder of this chapter will focus on the “Jerusalem” song-pilgrimage, triangulating the ritual practice of singing and sound-making, the importance of the embodied experience of moving through the British landscape in this process, and, finally, the visual artwork by Rice and Windsor-Clive that was inspired by, and emerged from, this pilgrimage. As with the previous chapters, a cross-disciplinary approach is applied, grounded primarily in art history but complemented with evidence gathered during fieldwork and participant interviews, “using the present as evidence for its own past,” as Collingwood urged.53 The aural and visual artwork that the pilgrimage was based on, and which it went on to generate, is linked to the landscape of Britain—and created, in both cases, specifically to facilitate an embodied experience and demonstrate the continuation of the idea of art-making, in visual and aural formats, as a form of pilgrimage across the ages, inducing a sense of communitas-throughculture and connection to the past. Blake’s project, and that of the BPT, are linked over time in that they have drawn on the legends and sacred stories surrounding the imbued and highly charged landscape, inviting the viewer to embark on a meditative, mental pilgrimage through pictures, lyrics, and song. As in all sacred art, the forms and iconography take on an ontological capacity, leading the viewer beyond the person or landscape represented to the thing itself, and hence function as powerful aids to prayer and meditative experience. Given the “green” enterprises and eco-consciousness of the BPT, and Blake’s famous complaints of the “dark satanic mills” scourging England, which he saw as the New Jerusalem—such representations can also offer a solution, perhaps, to the issues of pollution, littering, and amassing air miles—a growing problem as pilgrimages (re)flourish, and underscores the saliency of art as pilgrimage. Music, too, is considered by Parsons and Hayward to be an

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eco-friendly pilgrim offering; a song to give back to the landscape or to a saint in a spirit of gratitude. The goals for the “Jerusalem” song-pilgrimage included paying careful attention to how the song changes from place to place, as in Godric’s hymn as sung from Finchale to Canterbury Cathedral, as well as participating in an act of ritual “rewilding.” The intentions and rationale for the proposed route are worth quoting at length: In the deepening dark, as the year’s end approaches, the BPT and friends are making a pilgrimage from central London to coastal Sussex, to honour the 100-year anniversary of the song “Jerusalem”—“And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time . . .”. This song is the fruit of two people—William Blake, visionary poet and artist, and Hubert Parry, composer and director of the Royal College of Music. In 1804, Blake wrote the poem as part of his epic “Milton”. And in 1916, Parry set this poem to a rousing melody, designed to be sung by large groups of people. Today, the resulting song has become a unifying anthem for all and any English cause—from cricket/ rugby/football, to the Labour Party conference and Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, to anti-frackers and far-right nationalists, to the W.I., the Olympic games and the Royal Wedding, to churches and schools and mystics and comedians. Jerusalem the song has become infused in the soul of England. It deserves pilgrimage. We start at the graves of its creators, William Blake and Hubert Parry, in central London—and we walk toward the birthplace of the song in coastal Sussex. Our wholesome/holy places en route—where we’ll be singing Jerusalem—are landmarks connected to this song’s life-story, like the first place it was performed, or the building where it was commissioned. Often, these original buildings no longer exist. But that’s not the sort of mundane detail that can upset a Blakeian song-pilgrimage. We hope to discover how Jerusalem the song changes when sung in different places, and also how the song changes the places we sing it. We consider this an act of re-wilding, of releasing the song into its indigenous environment, the deep English interior.54

Rewilding can be understood as both returning a cultivated environment to its natural state, or, more broadly, as a returning to ancestral ways through remembrance and a return to the senses. In this case, the song was “released” from the cultural constructs to which it has been bound back into the landscape that inspired it. The folk singer, song collector, and climate activist Sam Lee, a frequent BPT collaborator, often uses the language of “rewilding” in relation to ancient folk songs, including “the Turtle Dove.” That particular song had been collected from the landlord of the Plough Inn in the Sussex village of Rusper by

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Ralph Vaughan Williams a hundred years ago. Like the turtle doves of Britain today, it was in imminent danger of extinction. Lee and a group of pilgrims trekked through the Sussex countryside to sing the song to the remaining turtle doves in the Knepp estate in an act of returning, re-enchanting, and rewilding.55 Blake’s overarching project, too, can be understood as an enterprise of rewilding, as we will see—through his attention to the ancient history of what he saw as a sacramental landscape. The context of Blake’s original work, mentioned briefly in the first paragraph describing the intentions of the pilgrimage, provides some background to his reimagining of the British landscape as the New Jerusalem, and, ultimately, the “topographic transferability” that the lyrics, and now-famous tune, carry.56 He posits the ostensibly rhetorical question—“And did those feet in ancient time / Walk upon Englands mountains green?” in a line evocative of the historical continuity of pilgrimage. Contextual understanding reveals a thread from the reader back to Blake (our visual imaginations are transported to the mills of the Industrial Revolution invoked in the eighth line) and then further to this ancient walker and even to Jesus—the holy Lamb of God, who is envisaged in the verdant pastures of the island.57 It is also not an idea unique to Blake alone, but one which was already embedded in British culture at the time he penned the preface to “Milton.” Blake was, in fact, drawn to a pilgrimage legend that had increased in popularity in his own time, and drew upon its wellspring in several pictorial representations along with his now-famous poem. The story is about Joseph of Arimathea, who appears in all four canonical gospels. In John 19:38 he is described as “being a disciple of Jesus” who “besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus” which he buried in a new sepulcher in a garden. According to an ancient legend, at some point Joseph of Arimathea had traveled to Britain in the first century to found a church in honor of the Virgin Mary. In one version of the story, Joseph was accompanied by the child Christ, who built a model church out of twigs, or “wattle,” which is described in a late-sixth-century letter from St. Augustine of Canterbury to Pope Gregory—Epistola ad Gregorium Papam. The child Christ is likely the “Lamb of God” on England’s pastures that Blake referred to. In another, arguably more popular version of the story, Joseph brought the Gospel and the Holy Grail, in which he caught some of the blood of Christ, to the island after the Resurrection, to which he bore witness.58 Joseph is said to have brought eleven pilgrim companions on his mission, making twelve people altogether, reflecting the number of Christ’s apostles. When he arrived in England—specifically, Glastonbury, in the Somerset Levels—he planted his staff in the ground, which miraculously grew into a holy

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thorn tree. Looking at his companions, he said, “Friends, we are weary all,” hence eventually giving rise to the name of the hill—Wearyall. A scion of the original thorn has always remained on the hill, blooming at Christmas, until very recently, when it was cut down in an act of mindless iconoclasm.59 The legend is embedded deeply in the cultural memory of England. In the collection of the British Library, a manuscript illumination in MS Royal 14 E III dating from the first quarter of the fourteenth century (Figure 3.5) shows

Figure 3.5 Joseph of Arimathea crossing the sea to Britain, MS Royal 14 E III fol. 66v (first quarter of the fourteenth century), illuminated manuscript. British Library.

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Joseph laying down his cloak over the sea—a stylized expanse of water contained in a bordered square and populated with fish—as pilgrims who are pure of heart are invited to cross over to England. Some stand on his cloak with expressions of awe and others wait in hope to see whether they, too, might have a place on this miraculous journey. The St. Joseph story also appears in the histories of William of Malmesbury—or De Gestis Regum Anglorum—composed around 1135. William tells us that St. Patrick appeared on the scene some three hundred years after Joseph of Arimathea had first arrived and formed a community of monks under his abbotship. It was around the time that William was writing his histories that one of the monastery’s monks had a vision that King Arthur and Guinevere were buried at the Abbey. Excavations uncovered a stone slab, a coffin, a sword thought to have been Excalibur, and a cross bearing an inscription that identified the grave as Arthur’s. Since then, legend, truth, history, and vernacular stories have been overlaid and often conflated. Religious pilgrims hence have had—and still have—a wide range of beliefs, agendas, and itineraries. “England’s Jerusalem,” as it is known, is considered holy ground to this day, with pilgrims visiting the thorn tree that was said to have sprouted from Joseph’s staff, the ruins of the abbey church, and Wearyall Hill under the Tor where Joseph had rested. In addition, the itinerary would have included the two small, healing streams which flowed from the hill where Joseph washed—or even possibly hid—the Holy Grail itself. From the flat, salt marshes rises the green, strangely conical four-hundred-foot hill known as Glastonbury Tor, and atop the hill is the fourteenth-century tower of a church dedicated to St. Michael. Shrines to St. Michael are usually set on high places, where the beacon fires were lit during the festival. This tower is one of the stations in an alignment of shrines dedicated to the archangel extending along the spine of southwest England all the way to St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. For the pilgrim inside the tower, the pointed archways frame a view of the gently green landscape of Somerset, studded with grazing sheep and red-roofed houses. Fog encases the landscape, and pilgrims will find themselves suddenly in a protean tower in the clouds, which disappears in the thick mist upon descending the hill. As the BPT mentions in their intentions, outlined earlier, the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, directed by Danny Boyle, opened with elevenyear-old Humphrey Keeper singing Blake’s lyrics set to Parry’s tune. The Tor featured prominently, although crowned with the thorn tree rather than Tower of St. Michael. Toward the end of the opening ceremonies the parade of nations

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wound around depositing their flags as they climbed, which immediately evokes the rags, ribbons, and flags regularly tied around the thorn tree by Glastonbury pilgrims. The bucolic envisioning reflects Blake’s memory of a cultural heritage that was not yet tainted by the “dark satanic mills” that scourged the landscape. Blake was perpetually concerned that his contemporaries were falling into a hell of their own construction as they turned from the spiritual and embraced the commercial and material, to the detriment of the landscape—and their own mental health. He particularly loathed the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the fact that children were robbed of their innocence as they went off to work in the mills. From early in his career, Blake had been captivated by mystic theologian Emmanuel Swedenborg’s (1688–1772) “postapocalyptic reading of the New Jerusalem as the imminent unfolding of a new spiritual age,” and saw the imbued English landscape as a place where spirituality might flourish again.60 This is expressed visually in the frontispiece to Blake’s illuminated book Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion, which depicts a pilgrim entering the space of the manuscript itself, and beckoning the reader to follow. The matte black depth of the arched, Gothic doorway with its radiating lines draw the eye into its liminal expanse, functioning as a portal beyond the page and into the space of the non-linear narrative as the chains in the margin break, freeing the beholder from their “mind-forg’d manacles” (Plate 9, left).61 The doorway is reminiscent of the arches of the tower atop Glastonbury Tor, through which a bird’s-eye view of Albion unfolds for the viewer, akin to the experience of entering the extratemporal space of his mythopoetic system as encapsulated by the “Jerusalem” poem. In all of Blake’s works, the pointed arches are symbolic of Gothic England—his age of imagination.62 Just as the pilgrim and viewer steps into the book, the Glastonbury pilgrim can physically step through the archways of St. Michael’s tower into the landscape of England, recast as a New Jerusalem (Plate 9, right). Although the BPT pilgrimage did not proceed as far as Somerset, Blake’s connection to the landscape and his project of mapping it into illuminated books to engender an experience of sacred travel for the reader is important to note. Of the journey from urban expanse into rural countryside, and the presence of Blake along the way, Windsor-Clive notes: We walked out of the bustling inner city, through its ex-industrial outskirts to the commuter lands of Surrey and beyond; through dappled avenues of auburnsoaked leaves; along the rivers and through the valleys. Passing through smells

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and changing soils, from the sand of Surrey to the oaks of the Sussex Weald, from pastoral scenes unfolding over the chalk downs to the fertile coastal plains. Journeying on foot allowed for a deep connection with the land we trod—itself a source of inspiration for “Jerusalem”.63

For Blake, the past was always present, and connected to the landscape; he enshrined the British Middle Ages as an age of spirituality, creativity, and imagination where sacred art could flourish. He also theorized that “every age is a Canterbury pilgrimage” and invited his readers to find their own pilgrim pairing among Chaucer’s characters. Anticipating Carl Jung, for Blake, they each represented a specific archetype that would reappear over time.64 As with the BPT, he also encouraged would-be pilgrims of the nineteenth century (if they had the inclination) to proceed directly to the sites associated with the Canterbury pilgrimage: St. Thomas’s Hospital which is situated near to [The Inn], is one of the most amiable features of the Christian Church; it belonged to the Monastery [o]f St Mary Overies and was dedicated to Thomas a Becket. The Pilgrims, if sick or lame, on their Journey to and from his Shrine, were received at this House.65

After his brief historical exposition and praise of the hospital, he explains that those who need spiritual guidance on their own journeys will still be welcomed there: Even at this day every friendless wretch who wants the succour of it, is considered as a Pilgrim travelling through this Journey of Life.66

The BPT, and Blake, across time and space, share the idea that it is entirely possible to “[open] the spiritual realm in the present, just as people opened to this realm in the past.”67 In other words, if the imagination is properly activated, anyone can experience a sense of temporal dislocation where the past was suddenly present. To Blake, Jesus—God made flesh and as human as he was divine—was an embodiment of the human imagination; he expounds on this writing that imagination is “the Divine-Humanity” (Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion, 1804–c. 1820), the “Divine Body of the Lord Jesus” (Milton: A Poem, c. 1804–11) and that “it is the Holy Ghost himself ” in his annotations to Dante’s Divine Comedy.68 Therefore, art-making and art-viewing was one way to pray, just as it was for his medieval predecessors who illuminated the gospels.

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Encapsulating this idea, he wrote in his “Annotations to the Laocoön” project of 1826–7 that: Prayer is the Study of Art Praise is the Practice of Art Fasting &c. all relate to Art.69

It is this discursive self-awareness and synthesis of aesthetics with mysticism that allows us to position Blake as both pilgrim and painter, and situate him within a historical trajectory of earlier religious, visionary artists and illuminators. Blake explained this idea very clearly in a catalogue he created around 1810, insisting: If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his Imagination approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought . . . or could make a Friend & Companion of one of these images of wonder . . . then would he meet the Lord in the Air & then he would be happy70

The idea, here, is for the viewer to approach his pictures in a spirit of contemplation, with the ultimate goal being to reach an elevated spiritual state. His pictures are not just things to behold, but are an invitation to a voyage—in this case into the English landscape, recast as a New Jerusalem, and translated into lyric and image. The poem was also not a one-off; this was a subject that Blake treated pictorially throughout his career. In an early relief etching from the National Gallery of Art, produced around 1794 (Figure 3.6), Joseph is shown as a bearded patriarch, preaching the gospels under the tree that had sprouted from his original staff. The early “inhabitants of Britain” flock around him, and are shown in various states of repentance, with down-cast eyes, and wonder as they raise their arms toward the heavens. Around 1809–10, Blake would again treat the Joseph of Arimathea legend, but this time with a slightly more esoteric message. He took up his engraving burin to alter a plate he had made early in his career. The original image was a copy of one of Michelangelo’s biblical figures from the crucifixion of St. Peter in the Pauline chapel. In his modifications to the original engraving, through the combined use of word and image, he recast Joseph as a sacred artist blazing a pilgrim trail to Glastonbury. Blake’s figure, after Michelangelo’s, is clothed in rags and an archaic hat and stepping forward on a precipice. In the second state of the engraving—that is, the altered copy—Blake named the figure “Joseph of Arimathea, among the Rocks of Albion” in a diagonal graffito inscribed on the face of the rock itself. The landscape of Glastonbury

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Figure 3.6 William Blake, Joseph of Arimathea Preaching to the Britons (c. 1794/6), relief etching, color-printed, with pen and watercolor. Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

around the Tor is believed to have been surrounded by the sea, which is reflected in Blake’s pictorial setting. On the lower margin, he inscribed: This is One of the Gothic Artists who Built the Cathedrals in what we call the Dark Ages Wandering about in sheep skins & goat skins of whom the World was not worthy such were the Christians in all Ages71

The image, with its textual explanation, embodies several important aspects of literal and imagined, or contemplative, pilgrimage practice. First is the idea of corporeal relics as holy and imbued objects, as at least one version of the Arimathea legend is based on the transference of the ultimate relic: that is, the blood of Christ that was shed at Calvary and believed to have been collected by Joseph. Next is the concept of building; that is, a creative enterprise in order to construct an imaginative architectural space for the worship of God. There is some overlap with the first point, as well: Blake’s phrase “Gothic Artists who Built the Cathedrals” is indicative of a particular historical moment and encapsulates

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sites like Glastonbury or Canterbury, where relics were displayed and to which pilgrims traveled. Within these sacred loci, in the nineteenth century as in the early Christian era, the temporal past and future promise of the Heavenly city were manifested in the spatial, symbolic of the promise of the world to come.72 The interlinking of the metaphorical idea of life’s pilgrimage and the sense of the term as a place-based practice became a major preoccupation not only for Blake but for many other visionary artists in the early nineteenth century and today. The pairing of the ideas of building/making and wandering is implicit in Blake’s graffito: artistic process becomes both a pilgrimage in itself and also the figuration of a destination. It is, however, the music that Sir Hubert Parry composed in 1916 as a setting for Blake’s lyric that created a vehicle for the transmission and translation of Blake’s text by the BPT. There is comparatively less written on Parry than Blake, whose works have fueled an entire subdiscipline of eighteenth-century English literature. He was, however, a fascinating and liberally-minded character in his own right—an Oxford don, philanthropist, lover of the arts, and a great supporter of former prime minister and statesman of the Liberal Party, William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98). In fact, although the “Jerusalem” hymn usually concludes the great British music celebration, the Proms, the 2010 festival strove to highlight his lesser-known work.73 He was also influenced by a devotion to England; his student Vaughan Williams would take to heart his charge to “Write choral music as befits an Englishman and a democrat,” drawing on an archive of folk music and culture, all retaining, perhaps, a trace of the medieval.74 The resulting (posthumous) collaboration is not only a popular church hymn that transcends denominational boundaries but is also used as a political rallying cry—again, appropriated by groups across a spectrum of parties and beliefs. It also crosses temporal boundaries both from Blake to Parry and back through the centuries. The past consistently collided with the present during the journey. As WindsorClive penned in a journal entry, Along the way, we sang “Jerusalem” at sites associated with the song’s life story while peregrinating through London, from humming the tune at Parry’s memorial stone in St. Paul’s Cathedral, to being joined in song by a mother and daughter opposite Wellington House, where the Propaganda Bureau set up by the British government during the first World War had commissioned the song for the Fight for Right campaign before Parry instead donated it to the women’s suffrage movement. (With many memorials en route, our journey was deeply imbued with the tragedy of the conflict.)75

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One of the goals of the project was to help drum up support for the Blake Society to finally mark his grave at Bunhill Fields in London with a headstone, so memorializing was a key aspect of the pilgrimage. Blake’s idea of art as a way to form a tangible connection to the past—and to a landscape of trauma, memory, and healing through communitas carried over through the acts of singing and walking along ancient British paths. In this case, the song is also rewilded through being intentionally reclaimed from the political contexts it has been used to promote and given back over to the landscape and to Blake, with an openness to what that might reveal. Hayward has written discursively about the idea of song and chant as a way to enact communitas through entrainment, which is the “process . . . by which a group of singers can become ‘in time’ or ‘in synchrony’ with each other.”76 Singing takes participants “outside of their comfort zone and into a new shared zone of uncertainty” (as in the eye-contact introductions during the Battle Abbey pilgrimage); “because everyone is singing the same thing to the same words, it organises a communal experience during that moment.”77 Parsons, too, emphasized the encounter with physical place as a way to connect with past and future: Communitas also through Quest consciousness—striving for common goals and reaching them. Especially holy places, which actually work. Whatever the diffuse understanding to them, there is a shared actuality of actually being there, in the same place at the same time, and feeling what this place does. A shared awe and smallness when stood by a cathedral, a common temporality when one touches a 1000-year-old yew tree. These experiences and encounters of place, where mysterious “higher truth” seems closer, or something is going on, they bring us together.78

The BPT’s “Jerusalem” pilgrimage combined walking, singing, and experiencing the interior spaces and sacred sites associated with the song. Alan Franks published an article after the “Jerusalem” song-pilgrimage experience, reminiscing on aspects of the walk that Camino de Santiago pilgrims might call “trail magic”; fortuitous and synchronous encounters that some might call coincidence—and others fated. One such story that several of the pilgrims repeated to me in interviews involved a chance encounter with a man dressed as the Grim Reaper on Halloween night. What began as a good laugh became much more significant when he was revealed to be Steven Payne, a medieval reenactor who sought (and gained) a letter of approval from the Pope to walk from Southampton to Canterbury wearing fourteenth-century clothing and dining on medieval recipes.79 Collingwood has posited that in order to fully comprehend

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history, there must be a reenactment of past experience. He concedes that empirical data is impossible to gather, but still “the historian must reenact the past in his own mind . . . through certain documents or relics of the past.”80 Vanessa Agnew, more recently, has invoked the idea of liminality to describe the possibility of the salience of reenactment in historical study, citing the “possibility for furthering historical understanding by acknowledging the essential otherness of historical agents and conveying this awareness through sympathetic and differentiated studies of the liminal and the everyday.”81 Michel de Certeau is another who was sympathetic with this kind of project; it is a way to facilitate a sense of authenticity and cultural understanding as the past is brought into the present. Unlike Payne’s, the “Jerusalem” pilgrimage was not a historical reenactment, and, in fact, the BPT has stated explicitly that their project is “not a re-creation of a lost past [but rather] a timely response to modernity.”82 We were not striving for authenticity in our modern boots and plastic ponchos on the way to Battle Abbey, and we used filtration devices when drinking from holy water sources. However, there are certainly elements of historicity such as walking with wooden staffs and following in the footsteps of Blake and Parry. Another place where material culture and music came together to create a sense of authenticity and connection to the past was when pilgrim James Keay played “Jerusalem” (joined by a chorus of his companions) on Parry’s piano in Shulbrede Priory, near Haslemere in West Sussex, from the original manuscript on which it was penned: Connection was the aim: the kind made between walking/talking companions even before Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales, but also between the present route and the past through which it went. That piano in Shulbrede had once been Parry’s. His daughter Dorothea married Arthur, First Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede—their descendants still live here. It’s a fair bet that he played Jerusalem on this instrument.83

In this case, a sense of communitas was facilitated through several channels; the piano itself, the sheet music, and the sound through which the sense of spirit traveled, connecting the pilgrims at once to one another (Turner and Turner’s idea of the pilgrim community), to Parry, to Blake, and, thanks to Blake’s lyrics, to a journey made on foot from Jerusalem to England in “ancient time.” The reciprocal relationship between landscape, music, and material culture is engendered in a second devotional song, also connected to a blossoming thorn tree, like Joseph of Arimathea’s: “Maria Durch Ein Dornwald Ging” [“Maria Through the Thornwood Went”]. I had the opportunity to hear it along the walk

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from Battle Abbey, having arrived at a little church along the way where we let our boots dry (or at least air out). The church smelled gently and comfortingly like mildew and furniture polish. As we rested, Parsons and Hayward lay down, head-to-head, with their pilgrim feet facing East (toward the altar) and West (toward the entrance of the church). In a recent correspondence, Parsons explained that the song tells the story of Mary, who “walks through a thornwood which has not blossomed for seven years, yet does so with Jesus ‘below her heart’ (in her womb) and immediately the thorns all burst into flower.”84 To him, this encapsulates what pilgrimage practice means for the BPT; “that walking through the landscape with holiness (wholeness/holisticity—electric/elasticness!) can transform the nature of reality and life that we encounter.” On the idea of communitas, or the connection to the past and future that imagery and music can facilitate, Parsons recounted that it was taught to him by a Polish woman who had all of her possessions taken away in the Second World War, but had raised money to eat by singing the song and binding it into books. He said that “the song literally transformed the reality of life they encountered, and caused blossoms where once there were only thorns.”85 Hayward and Parsons once sang the Thornwood song in sacred spaces from Winchester to Canterbury, on a “penniless pilgrimage,” finally culminating at the site of Becket’s martyrdom, where choir practice was silenced to accommodate their simple duet. The site is an acoustically compelling place where, on a different occasion already recounted, Hayward sang out Godric’s hymn, also to the Virgin Mary. The penniless pilgrimage was a difficult journey, marked with serious illness (Hayward and Parsons water filter failed and they had become extremely sick). However, it was the song itself that “caused a blossoming of [their] journey,” as Parsons explained—“the small song filled the place[s] and us.” The melancholy carol, the lyrics recounting the legend of Maria and the Christmas story, the landscape of thorns (an iconographic foreshadowing of the Passion), and the Polish woman’s story of displacement during the War are all carried through the music as a symbol-vehicle that—like Blake’s art—participates in and carries forward the “spirit” of the original thing that it represents.86

Art along the Way Two of the BPT “Jerusalem” pilgrims visually recorded their experiences through drawings, translating the music (which, it has been argued, contained a trace of

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the holiness of the landscape) into image. Kitty Rice and India Windsor-Clive are both visual artists; as Rice described in an interview, “spiritual feelings can be translated into imagery most easily.”87 Rice and Windsor-Clive created their drawings in real time during the experience, often in sites of spiritual significance, such as in Blake’s cottage at Felpham while lying in the space where his bed once was, or in line with the altar between the choir stalls of an old church. Both artists called their work “automatic drawings,” which was a technique used by the Surrealists; André Breton, known as one of the co-founders of the movement, “locates [in the First Manifesto of Surrealism] the invention of psychic automatism within the experience of hypnogogic images—that is, of halfwaking, half-dreaming, visual experience.”88 Often, their art-making took place during the singing of “Jerusalem,” bringing the visual and aural together as well as recalling spiritualized landscapes and sacred spaces, hence recapturing and recreating “spots of time” for the pilgrim viewer. Windsor-Clive described a moment during the pilgrimage where the group hunkered down in an old pub at a big wooden table; it was late, dark, and everyone was hungry. They decided to stay a while to eat dinner, and the evening spontaneously turned into an art workshop or salon with singing and drawing—paper and ink appeared on the table, or, as Windsor-Clive described, “everyone exploded with getting out drawing material.”89 As we have seen in previous chapters, medieval maps and manuscripts functioned as meditative pilgrimages for the viewer, and the drawings created by Rice and Windsor-Clive can be understood as multitudinous maps leading the viewer, by proxy, into the time and space of the BPT “Jerusalem” pilgrimage. If the drawings are engaged as maps, Windsor-Clive’s sketchbook is exemplary of this—full of repeating circles and spirals (Figure 3.7). The form is one that reflects and underpins so many principles of nature and culture, crossing temporal and geographic boundaries. The “remarkable properties” of the “simple two-dimensional spiral” formed the subject of a study published by Purce in 1974, whose work has underpinned some of the foundational principles of the BPT; as a voice teacher, she has both taught and collaborated with Hayward, and continues to be an adviser to the Trust: [The spiral] both comes from and returns to its source; it is a continuum whose ends are opposite and yet the same; and it demonstrates the cycles of change within the continuum and the alternation of the polarities within each cycle. It embodies the principles of expansion and contraction, through changes in velocity, and the potential for simultaneous movement in either direction

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towards its two extremities, the centre and periphery, flow into each other; essentially they are interchangeable.90

Purce invokes a passage from Blake’s Milton, of which the “Jerusalem” poem prefaces, to describe this “universal spherical vortex [which] is perhaps the most complete symbol by which we can map our cosmic journey”: The nature of infinity is this: That everything has its Own vortex, and when once a traveller thro’ Eternity Has pass’d that Vortex, he perceives it roll backward behind His path, into a globe itself [i]nfolding like a sun . . . Thus is the heaven a vortex pass’d already, and the earth A vortex not yet pass’d by the traveller thro’ Eternity.91

Blake describes the path infolding “like a sun / Or like a moon, or like a universe of starry majesty,” invoking the idea of the spiritual pilgrimage, and perhaps nodding to the beginning of Dante’s journey through the Divine Comedy, which Blake would go on to illustrate between 1824 and 1827. Toward the beginning of Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion Blake writes, “trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish’d at me. / Yet they forgive my wanderings, I rest not from my great task!” like the beginning of the Comedy, where Dante himself begins his journey as a “pilgrim with a fearful heart.”92 The pilgrimage theme continues throughout Blake’s “Milton, A Poem” in the vortex

Figure 3.7 India Windsor-Clive, drawings created in real-time along the “Jerusalem” pilgrimage (c. October 2016), ink on paper (sketchbook).

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passage quoted earlier and in the “Jerusalem” lyrics—but also recapitulated visually in the pack-carrying travelers in the borders among the climbing vines. Windsor-Clive, who studied History of Art at Bristol University, combines a knowledge of history with praxis; she regularly writes for Resurgence & Ecologist, So It Goes, and Vinyl Factory, and recently finished ghostwriting an autobiography in Japan. She had several administrative and creative roles as one of the first members of the BPT (beyond the founders, Parsons and Hayward) and worked there until recently as the Design and Publications Consultant. The drawings in Windsor-Clive’s “Jerusalem” sketchbook are visually evocative of Blake’s works. In fact, she said that she was an admirer of the artist before embarking on the pilgrimage (“I particularly love words and visuals, so he’s been an incredibly strong influence in that respect”)93 and resonate iconographically with the profusion of celestial orbs, vines, and figures. The mystic spiral, with its twofold symbolism of “inward process of regeneration and integration” and outward pilgrimage, appears throughout.94 One especially striking image (Figure 3.8) is a diminutive circle, evocative of the rubber stamps, perhaps, that mark the “passports” carried by pilgrims in Spain and elsewhere; pubs, churches, and other sites of interest along the way will happily stamp the booklet providing the pilgrim with a souvenir and hearkening back to a medieval tradition of collecting tin emblems to be sewn onto one’s hat (a shell for Santiago de Compostela, an enthroned Madonna for Walsingham). Inside the circle are seven interconnected spirals, the number evocative of so many things: the sacraments, the gifts of the Holy Spirit in Catholic Christianity, the seven-spired medieval architecture in Blake’s illustrations to John Bunyan’s

Figure 3.8 India Windsor-Clive, “And did those feet in ancient time” spiral, drawing created in real-time along the “Jerusalem” pilgrimage (c. October 2016), ink on paper (sketchbook).

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Pilgrim’s Progress, the “fourfold seven” which Blake describes as one of the numbers of the imagination in his system of revelation, and the “seven thousand years” across which a moment of time is drawn out by Blake’s character, Eno— Aged Mother in his work, “The Four Zoas.”95 Such patterns also adorn the intricate garments on early Celtic Christian art, such as a gilt bronze crucifix reproduced in Purce’s Mystic Spiral (although Christ has six, not seven interconnected circles on his chest and abdomen, Figure 3.9); in an illumination of the initial Tau, from the Berthold Missal created in early thirteenth-century Germany, six spirals encircle a seventh central one, crowned by Christ, read, by Purce, as showing “the flow within the body, and its subtle energy centres, as a twofold axis and opposing spirals. The central spiral, the all-encompassing heart,

Figure 3.9 Crucifixion, early seventh-century Ireland, gilt bronze. National Museum of Ireland.

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expands like the ripples of the ocean to embrace the universe.”96 Around the circle of contained spirals in her sketchbook, Windsor-Clive has penned Blake’s lyrics, “And did those feet in Ancient time.” The pattern appears again as vining forms which punctuate a poem about a departing lover whom a traveler “takes with a sigh”; there are also spirals that become almost vortex-like—one stands alone and another is set within concentric squares, leading the eye into the expanse of the diary (and perhaps functions as an invitation into the pilgrimage space itself). Blake, too, used this technique in his Frontispiece to Jerusalem (see Plate 9, left), activating a pilgrimage of the eye. It is appropriate that another spiral appears on the pages where Windsor-Clive describes lying on the floor of Blake’s cottage at Felpham Court where the bed once stood: I go upstairs in the dark and enter the bedroom where Blake slept. The energy is extraordinary . . . we lie where the bed must have been. We lie in silence. The energy is heavy. I feel weak pinned to the floor and gravity sucking me down. It begins to be impossible to imagine getting up.97

Kitty Rice, like Windsor-Clive, was also impacted by the experience inside Blake’s cottage; she described the “little corner in the bedroom, sloped upward and the perfect nook to hide in” and the somewhat fearful “energy” of the place, commenting that probably not many had the experience of drawing there.98 Rice has a background in visual art having completed a Foundation at Chelsea School of Art and Design, after which she earned a degree from the London College of Communication studying Graphic and Spatial Design and has a particular interest in typography. She now lives and works in Mexico designing prints and textiles. The BPT “Jerusalem” pilgrimage took place in late October, and Rice was certainly cognizant of the liminal and transitory time of the year. The Christian calendar long ago mapped All Saints and All Souls onto extant Indigenous festivals which celebrate and remember the dead. In her adopted country, this is the time of the festival of Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, when an extratemporal communitas is enacted as ancestors are lovingly welcomed back for an evening of festive merriment. They pass through a bower of fragrant marigold flowers, arching over an altarcito containing objects of remembrance. One of Rice’s drawings combines an ionic column with a man wearing a cloak and hat, with a border pattern evocative of Mexican textiles, the expansive garment merging into a pelican-like bird (Figure 3.10). According to an ancient legend, the pelican in the wilderness fed her young with blood from

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her pierced breast, and has become symbolic of Christ’s sacrifice. She appears again in another drawing, with her beak nearly touching two infant birds on her breast, wings outstretched, perched in a bouquet of seven roses, traditionally symbolic of the Passion (red and with thorns) and an attribute of the Virgin Mary. For Rice, the pelican is a crucial feminine symbol of the Church.99 There is a relationship here with the Mexican figure and his cloak, which is evocative of St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474–1548). A miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared on his outer garment or tilma. When it was unfurled, fragrant roses spilled out. The sacred and miraculous image remains on the cloak today. It is enshrined at the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in Mexico City, where it is venerated by millions of pilgrims each year. Many of Rice’s illustrations combine traditional Christian iconography with border designs stylistically reminiscent of Blake’s illuminated printing methods with their twisting vines around the edges. The inky, saturated backgrounds studded with little white stars are also perhaps especially evocative of Blake’s little-known, weeping Marian icon (1825, Virgin and Child, now at the Yale Center for British Art (Figure 3.11). One drawing depicts a stained-glass window with thin, Gothic tracery flanked with wings on which eyes are embedded, quietly watching (Figure 3.10b). Both the windows and the eyes bring to mind the idea of spiritual sight—a looking beyond the page into the (medieval, British) past as well as forward to the viewer of the picture, connecting past and present in a visual communitas. Perhaps the wings introduce an element of anagogy, or the use of images toward spiritual ascent, underscored by the setting within a medieval church. In Victorine philosophy (the writings of Hugh and Richard of St. Victor), the first stage of corporeal vision involved the eye of the flesh seeing the form and image of rational things. In the second stage, the imagination was activated so that the “mystical significance” was perceived in things. Continuing the ascent, the third stage was characterized by perceiving the spirit or “truth of hidden things . . . by means of forms and figures and similitude,” followed by the final, mystical stage: the “pure and naked seeing of divine reality.”100 This is consistent with the windows beyond, and the eyes staring forth and engaging the viewer. Doors, wings, Gothic windows, and crosses are repeating iconographic features throughout the series; another image of a small, country church with pointed eaves is flanked with two roundels showing flaming eyes—one open and one closed, perhaps making a visual point about interior seeing and exterior expression—akin to the Victorine (and Augustinian) notion of vision and

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Figure 3.10 Kitty Rice, Untitled (a: Pelican, b: stained glass, c: country church with eyes), drawings from the BPT’s “Jerusalem” pilgrimage (October 2016), ink on paper. 141

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Figure 3.11 William Blake, Virgin and Child (1825), Tempera on panel, Yale Center for British Art (Paul Mellon Collection).

perception (of earthly things—in this case, observed or imagined on a pilgrimage) as a way to embark on an interior meditation (Figure 3.10c). Blake, the inspiration for the BPT “Jerusalem” pilgrimage and Rice’s drawings, encouraged the use of the corporeal object, or material manifestation of vision, as a means to gain a closer proximity to the divine and embark on the process of mental pilgrimage. One example of the many ways in which this earthly mirror of the divine finds its way into Blake’s system can be found in The Vision of the Last Judgment, where he wrote: All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the Divine body of the Saviour the True Vine of Eternity The Human Imagination who appeared to Me

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as Coming to Judgment. among his Saints & throwing off the Temporal that the Eternal might be Establishd. around him were seen the Images of Existences according to . . . a certain order suited to my Imaginative Eye.101

Rice’s iconography seems to point to Blake’s passage, and visually recapitulates the inherited medieval notion of the expansiveness of a cycle of vision from outward and earthly forms to a perceived union with the divine. With a nod to Surrealist automatic methods, Rice describes her artistic process as one of “accessing the unconscious through different means” in which observational information is collected and then this is translated through emotion, hence “turning surreal thoughts into something that is communicable to the audience.”102 It is resonant with Blake’s desire to make material the things of the imagination; he linked the process of art-making to pilgrimage process through notions of the possibility of spiritual ascent through art. Within Blake’s schema of fourfold seeing, corporeal vision merged with the imagination and spirit; ideas that were conveyed in various ways. For Blake, “single vision” is a corporeal sensation, experienced only through the optic nerve. This becomes twofold when spiritual forms become incarnate in earthly objects. Through an emotive channel of divine love, the twofold vision is capable of entering a threefold state, where spiritual forms exist as eternal typographies, and become mirrors where man can envisage an escape from the bonds of the fallen world. This shifts to the final state, when the prophetic artist is united with God.103 Blake once told his friend, student, and fellow-artist George Richmond that he could “look at a knot of wood until he was frightened at it,”104 and Palmer repeated the sentiment when he wrote, “May not half the Art be learned from the gradations in coffee-grouts?”105 The other “half ” of the “the Art” following linear form and imaginative consummation on the part of the beholder came from the subsequent two states of vision, informed by emotive love, imagination, and the articulation of spiritual forms into eternal typographies.106 The importance of the outline, or non-mimetic form within Blake’s extended artistic circle was perhaps best expressed by A. W. Schlegel in his well-known 1799 review of Blake’s colleague John Flaxman’s outline drawings illustrating the Divine Comedy: “The imagination is incited to complete the picture and to continue to create independently according to the stimulation it has received”; in art history, Gombrich called this the “beholder’s share.”107 Rice works by “translating spiritual feelings into imagery.”108 In this way, the drawings are linked to the landscape, to the sacred spaces and stations of pilgrimage, and to her experience. They become maps for an experience to be

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enacted by others. Karst has helpfully invoked Michel de Certeau’s description of translation to parse the aspects of both capturing or replicating an experience as well as (and this is the crucial bit as it relates to Rice’s work) entailing “the creation of a new and distinct sacred space.”109 A sheet of annotated sketches is revealing; she explains that the series of thumbnail images with descriptions “were done to summarise some ideas which were sparked by automatic drawings. The automatism came first and then the sketches were an afterthought, after the pilgrimage, in order to clarify some key ideas.”110 The man with the Mexican tilma is labeled “parental guidance”; the pelican is “sharing the same Christian basis”; the image of the eye roundels is “energetic points in a church.”111 Blake had a similar process; after creating his plates and printing them, he and his wife, Katherine Sophia (Kate), would revisit the images and “illuminate” them with watercolors, sometimes changing the tone and mood, revisiting and (re)interpreting the prints each time they were run through the press.112 The acts of the creation of, and viewing, these artworks and participating in the revival of song is not seen as subsidiary to the English landscape itself, but rather as a participant in it. Therefore, the process of creating art is, in both Blake’s case, and in the work of the participants of the BPT’s “Jerusalem” journey, a pilgrimage— yet the resultant paintings and songs also have the potential to become sites of pilgrimage for others where communitas is (and continues to be) enacted. The singing of Blake’s “Jerusalem” continuously is an example of the salience of this through to the present. Such awareness shifts experiences of viewing as well as the status of art objects, both medieval and modern. The journey of the pilgrim is always a shared experience with those who have come before, and art invites us to step in sync with those “ancient feet who walked upon Englands mountains green” as a vital pilgrimage locus in and of itself.

Afterword: Bountiful, West Jordan, and Zion Park This chapter was penned in many different places: the dry summer sunshine of Berkeley, California and (awkwardly) in a Moleskine notebook as my wet, sloshing Chelsea boots kept rhythm with wooden staffs as I walked through the forests outside of Battle Abbey. It is ending as I sit in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains of Utah almost a year since that pilgrimage. The climate and landscape of this dry, desert-like country with its red canyons and miles of stars could not be more different than the green and pleasant land of England. However, both

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places were posited as holy spaces and the “New Jerusalem.” In this case, the Mormons came to occupy, missionize, and rename a landscape already sacred to the Ute, Paiute, Goshute, Shoshone, and Diné (Navajo) tribes.113 The atmosphere at the beginning of August is hot and hazy with a gray-blue sky contrasting the reddish-brown mountains in the distance and creating a strange and dreamlike dimensionality. The vastness is immense and awe-inspiring, echoed in the placenames given by the missionaries. The town of Bountiful is not far from West Jordan with the canyons of Zion Park keeping vigil in the distance. The twentiethcentury composer, pilgrim, and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen traveled to this landscape imbued with history and trauma, translating his experiences into a musical composition that brings the listener “from the canyons, to the stars,” just as the title promises.114 He described his pilgrimage among these red mountains in a 1979 interview in a language that echoes Dante’s, at the beginning of the Divine Comedy, when he sees the path ahead (from the depths to the stars, with the sun illuminating the path he must traverse): “From the depths of the abyss, we could see the path circling very high above us, and that is what inspired the title of my work, From the Canyons to the Stars, one progresses from the deepest bowels of the earth and ascends towards the stars.”115 At the culmination of the piece we finally reach “Zion Park and the Celestial City”; Messiaen tells us that “Finally, one ends up in paradise, like the Mormons who believed that they had discovered the celestial Jerusalem at Zion Park.”116 These mountains of Utah were a place where Messiaen glimpsed the divine, as Blake had in England. He wrote that religious art “expresses the search for a single thing, which is God, but a single thing that is everywhere, that may be found in everything, above and below everything.”117 He found a glimpse of the heavenly city in a terrestrial park—these Jerusalem-like rolling mountains and canyons like slices out of the earth. Messiaen was also fond of the French Catholic revivalist Ernest Hello, who gave recourse to the scriptural pilgrimage motif of wandering in the desert in his writings, which Messiaen quotes in the notes to the piece: “He who is to be found is vast: one must discard everything in order to take the first steps towards him . . . Go deep into the Desert of deserts.”118 Messiaen, via his invocation of Hello’s theology, uses the pilgrimage rhetoric and metaphor of “taking steps” toward God, and going deep into the desert—that is, walking slowly in a spirit of embodied contemplation. Messiaen emphasized the importance of walking, which he would translate into the concert hall, bringing traces of the landscape into song: “Apparently one can traverse the canyon on a horse or a mule,” he

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explained, “but I went on foot because it’s much nicer that way.”119 While walking, he paused to record the colors—the rich reds of the canyons. For Messiaen, colors were evocative of tones, so, in a sense, he “painted” with music. He sought to retain a trace of the vibrant matter of the landscape itself—in this case, the Utah canyons—in the music. Pilgrims often take a souvenir from the site they have visited to recreate and remember their journey; the role of these tokens, pace Jas Elsner, “is that they help to reconstruct the sacred journey in the imagination. For the actual pilgrim this is an act of memory; for the aspiring pilgrim, such objects provide an imaginative link with the sacred goal, which, it is hoped, will be encountered in the future.”120 Messiaen’s music was a vessel that evoked his encounter with the landscape. It is formed synesthetically from layers of colors expressed in rock and earth—and can be understood as a pilgrimage souvenir, just like the archival relics of Parry’s music and Blake’s lyrics. Time and space are always fluid when on pilgrimage. It is easy to feel a sense of the deep past and distant future; as I have explored elsewhere in this book, it can, perhaps, be understood through theological constructs of the mingled temporalities of the created world and the world to come. It can also be felt when the pilgrim comes into contact with an object; for example, the reliquary of Santiago de Compostela in Spain or the fabric tilma on which Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin. It often seems to the pilgrim as if they are in community—communitas—with all those who have come before and all those who will come again in the future. It is surprising to me that the musicologist Paul Griffiths wrote that From the Canyons to the Stars is, “not a pilgrim’s progress: such would be unthinkable given Messiaen’s predilection for a sense of time that slows, stops, rotates, and turns back on itself.”121 I would argue that the opposite is true. It is this very intermingling and folding over of time and space that makes Messiaen’s musical journey a pilgrimage. Perhaps it is more a Catholic pilgrimage than a Bunyanesque progress, however—it is a pilgrimage which is circuitous, and one which challenges the sojourner to travel into the very depths of their soul before the goal of the shrine is reached. Griffiths and I very much agree that glimpses of the celestial city are seen in an A major glory before the conclusion of the piece and that the depths of the Canyons are not fully realized until the last movement. Perhaps Messiaen remembered his mother Cecile’s love of Chartres Cathedral, where she would often take the young Olivier. Embedded in the pavement of the cathedral is the only extant medieval labyrinth. Labyrinths, which are explored more fully in the final chapter, are circuitous paths winding from the exterior of

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a circle, almost to the center, and out again. In the Middle Ages, they could be used as a scaled-down pilgrimage for those who could not travel to Jerusalem. Messiaen’s piece is a labyrinth, bringing us close to a deeper understanding of God’s love and then flinging us back out into the wilderness of the world, again and again until the center is reached. As Messiaen wrote, it was, “above all a religious work of praise and contemplation”122 echoing Blake’s sentiment that “Prayer is the study of Art. / Praise is the practice of Art.” Song is removed enough from associations with Catholic popular piety to appeal to the imagination of a British public who now profess a variety of religious beliefs (or none). Songs connect through word and lyric, but they also connect in physical terms, for songs are written down and are passed through breath and vibration.123 The BPT ensures that pilgrimage remains “Open to All.” Their project appeals to pilgrims of varying abilities by activating not just one but many of the senses, with haptic experience being integral to the experience (including sight and touch but also sound, resonance and vibration). As Parsons put it: Song works because of its setting in silence—it augments the quiet, and fades into it afterwards . . . adding such a layer of sacredness to the silence that others will encounter afterward is a large part of what makes churches so special as public temples. We share the offerings of countless generations gone before, and add our own small accretion of holiness as we can.124

Songs, in this way, are souvenirs, ex-votos, and sites in and of themselves; they serve to activate spaces and the senses, and, in the case of “Sainte Marie” and “Jerusalem” fall into a legacy of the diffusion of the holiness of the landscape—a new kind of pilgrim offering and souvenir for the modern era.

Notes 1 As quoted in the Chicago Tribune, August 9, 1995. 2 The BPT press archive is extensive, including BBC Radio 4 (where Guy Hayward was interviewed as part of the launch of the Cathedral Pilgrimage Project for 2020), a BBC Radio Leicestershire program on multi-faith pilgrimage, the BBC1 television program Songs of Praise, a Church Times supplement, “Pilgrims Make Progress” (January 25, 2019), an article by J. P. Flintoff in The Times, “Walking Therapy: Why It’s Good to Talk in the Great Outdoors” (May 6, 2019), and an English Heritage Podcast, “Explore England’s History on a Pilgrimage Walk” (September 2019). See

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also H. Sherwood, “The Modern Pilgrims Retracing Britain’s Ancient Routes,” The Guardian, April 15, 2017. A complete listing can be found on the BPT website, https://britishpilgrimage.org/ (accessed June 25, 2020). Jerusalem Pilgrimage 2016, BPT website: http://britishpilgrimage.org/2016/10/ jerusalem-pilgrimage-2016/ (accessed July 25, 2018). S. Heaney, “The Sense of Place,” in his Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978 (New York: Noonday, 1980), 132. Parsons, interview April 25, 2020, https://folkhorrorrevival.com/2020/04/25/ interview-with-will-parsons-of-the-british-pilgrimage-trust/. D. Brown and G. Hopps, The Extravagance of Music (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 7. Brown and Hopps, Extravagance of Music, 9. R. Sheldrake, Science and Spiritual Practices: Transformative Experiences and Their Effects on Our Bodies, Brains, and Health (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2018), 133. Karst’s theory of translation posits an accessibility for a sacred site “beyond the borders” of the original: L. A. Karst, “A New Creation: Translating Lourdes in America,” Liturgy, 32/3 (2017), 31. Sheldrake, Science and Spiritual Practices, 133. Thank you to Kelly Kilpatrick for pointing out the revised dating. The route is based on the British Library’s medieval Gough Map and has accrued much public interest. See H. Sherwood, “The Modern Pilgrims Retracing Britain’s Ancient Routes,” The Guardian, April 15, 2017. From the BPT events/ticketing website, June 24, 2016. Ibid. V. Turner and E. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (3rd edn., New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 231. D. Ross, “Introduction,” in V. Turner and E. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), xli. From BPT pilgrim testimonials provided by Hayward, February 2020. Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 71; see also “relics” in index. Thank you to Rina Frankiel for recounting her experience on the BPT’s second pilgrimage following the October 2016 “Jerusalem” itinerary (in a correspondence with the author, March 11, 2017). Like many early saints, Godric was not officially canonized, but his cult at Finchale, Durham, and among the Cistercians was well-established: D. H. Farmer (ed.), Butler’s Lives of the Saints: May (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), 113. M. Coombe, “What a Performance: The Songs of St. Godric of Finchale,” in M. Coombe, A. Mouron, and C. Whitehead (eds.), Saints of North-East England, 600–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 219–42, at 221. See also K. Barush, “The Afterlife of Becket in the Modern Imagination,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 173/1 (2020).

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20 Cambridge University Library, Mm iv 28, final leaf, tr. H. Deeming, “The Songs of St Godric: A Neglected Context,” Music and Letters, 86 (2005), 169–85, at 174. 21 Sainte Marie (London, British Library MS Royal 5 F vii, fol. 85), tr. Coombe, “What a Performance,” 222. 22 Coombe, “What a Performance,” 231. 23 Deeming, “The Songs of St Godric,” 170. 24 William of Malmesbury, Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary (c. 1135), tr. Thomson and Winterbottom (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015), miracle 7, 33–4 and Nigel of Canterbury (Nigellus Wireker), Miracles of the Virgin Mary, in Verse / Miracula Sancte Dei Genitricis Virginis Marie, Versifice, ed. and tr. J. Ziolkowski, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, 17 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986), 26–9. 25 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de Vita et Miraculis S. Godrici, Heremitae de Finchale, ed. J. Stevenson, Surtees Society, 20 (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1847), 236. 26 Ibid., 239. 27 Hayward, interview with author, November 26, 2019. 28 R. Stanley, “Origins and Applications of Music and Chronic Illness: Role of the Voice, Ancient Chant Scales, and Autonomic Nervous System,” in M. J. Stoltzfus, R. Green, and D. Schumm (eds.), Chronic Illness, Spirituality, and Healing: Diverse Disciplinary, Religious, and Cultural Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 115–40, at 115–16. 29 https://www.jillpurce.com/ (accessed June 25, 2020). 30 Ibid. 31 Sheldrake, Science and Spiritual Practices, 133. 32 Ibid., 188. 33 David Flood, the organist and master of choristers, confirmed that the hymn has not been sung by cathedral musicians in recent memory. 34 From BPT pilgrim testimonials provided by Hayward, February 2020. 35 See R. Koopmans, “ ‘Water Mixed with the Blood of Thomas’: Contact Relic Manufacture Pictured in Canterbury Cathedral’s Stained Glass,” Journal of Medieval History, 42/5 (2016); S. Blick, “Votives, Images, Interaction and Pilgrimage to the Tomb and Shrine of St. Thomas Becket, Canterbury Cathedral,” in S. Blick and G. Gelfand (eds.), Push Me, Pull You: Art and Devotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brills, 2011), II, 21–58; and S. Blick, “Comparing Pilgrim Souvenirs and Trinity Chapel Windows at Canterbury Cathedral: An Exploration of Context, Copying, and the Recovery of Lost Stained Glass,” Mirator (September 2001), 1–27, at 5. 36 Koopmans, “Water.” 37 From BPT pilgrim testimonials provided by Hayward, February 2020. 38 Guy Hayward, “Songs Have a Home,” https://guyhayward.com/songs-have-a-home (n.d.).

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39 J. M. H. Smith, “Relics: An Evolving Tradition in Latin Christianity,” in C. Hahn and H. Klein (eds.), Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2015), 53, and at 60: “Medieval discourses about relics were the product of the educated, clerical, and monastic elite. Participation in the cult of relics was far more widespread, however, and we can establish what a large circle of people regarded as relics by interrogating the evidence of what they collected and treasured.” 40 Deeming, “The Songs of St Godric,” 174. 41 J. W. Rankin, “Hymns of St. Godric,” PMLA , 38/4 (1923), 699–711, at 710–11. 42 D. Dyas, M. Bowman, S. Coleman, J. Jenkins, and T. Sepp, Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals, Past and Present: Canterbury Cathedral Report and Findings, Arts & Humanities Research Council (York: University of York, The Centre for the Study of Christianity & Culture, March 2017), 14. 43 See Stanley, “Origins and Applications of Music,” 115–16; and R. Gass and K. Brehony, Chanting: Discovering Spirit in Sound (New York: Broadway Books, 1999). 44 The research was also synthesized by Simon Coleman and Marion Bowman in “Religion in Cathedrals: Pilgrimage, Heritage, Adjacency, and the Politics of Replication in Northern Europe,” Religion, 49/1 (2019), 1–23. 45 As described by L. Lang-Sims, cathedral guide, 1980. Other reasons for visits include to “follow in other pilgrims’ footsteps” and “a 50-year dream to . . . spend time with St Thomas.” A London–Canterbury pilgrim commented that “A Cathedral has amazing potential for spiritual ambience and very powerful connection with the numinous.” In Dyas et al., Pilgrimage and England’s Cathedrals, 5–7. 46 Ibid., 8. 47 Parsons in a correspondence with the author following the Battle Abbey pilgrimage, September 14, 2017. 48 Ibid. 49 J. E. Killinger, Communitas, as cited by Ross, “Introduction,” xli. 50 Parsons, “Pilgrimage: A Change is Afoot in Britain,” Positive.News, March 15, 2017, https://www.positive.news/lifestyle/pilgrimage-a-change-is-afoot-in-britain/ (accessed July 23, 2018). 51 W. Blake, “Milton: A Poem” [1804–10], in D. V. Erdman and H. Bloom (eds.), The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 95–6. 52 “And do these feet in present time . . .,” Alan Franks’s personal blog, November 18, 2016. Available online: https://web.archive.org/web/20180820192100/http:// alanfranks.com/music/jerusalem/ (accessed July 30, 2018). 53 R. G. Collingwood, “Epilegomena 2: The Historical Imagination,” in The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), 247. 54 BPT website (accessed July 25, 2018).

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55 P. Barkham, “ ‘We Are Silencing the Natural World’: Can the Turtle Dove Be Saved?” The Guardian (August 3, 2019). Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/ environment/2019/aug/03/silencing-natural-world-can-turtle-dove-be-saved; see also http://samleesong.co.uk/ 56 For another perspective on the British project of mapping one holy site onto another, see S. Coleman, “ ‘Pilgrimage to England’s Nazareth’: Landscapes of Myth and Memory at Walsingham,” in E. Badone and S. R. Roseman (eds.), Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 54. 57 The following material was presented, in part, at the William and Mary Consortium for Pilgrimage Studies Conference (October 2017) and published in a research report, K. Barush, “Enacting the Glastonbury Pilgrimage through Communitas and Aural/Visual Culture,” International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Studies 6/2 (2018) (What Is Pilgrimage?). I am grateful to the journal for allowing the work to be republished here. 58 Epistola ad Gregorium papam in David Alton, Pilgrim Ways: Catholic Pilgrimage Sites in Britain and Ireland (London: St. Paul’s, 2001), 17. 59 There is a small thorn being regrown from the tree that was destroyed in 2010. 60 D. P. Zuber, A Language of Things: Emmanuel Swedenborg and the American Environmental Imagination (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2019), 138. 61 “In every voice . . . The mind-forg’d manacles I hear”; William Blake, “London” from Songs of Experience [1794], in D. V. Erdman and H. Bloom (eds.), The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008). 62 K. Barush, Art and the Sacred Journey in Britain, 1790-1850 (Abingdon: Routledge), 120–1. Some of the historical material which underpins part of this chapter was published previously in Art and the Sacred Journey. It is reproduced here with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear. 63 I. Windsor-Clive, “Stepping Out with a Song,” Resurgence & Ecologist, 300 (2017). 64 W. Blake, “Descriptive Catalogue” [1809], in D. V. Erdman and H. Bloom (eds.), The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 532–3. 65 W. Blake, “Blake’s Chaucer, The Canterbury Pilgrims. The Fresco Picture, representing Chaucer’s Characters painted by William Blake, As it is now submitted to the Public [Second Prospectus]” [c. 1810], in D. V. Erdman and H. Bloom (eds.), The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 569. 66 Ibid. 67 Sheldrake, Science and Spiritual Practices, 133.

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68 See S. F. Damon, William Blake: His Philosophies and Symbols (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1958), 195 for a list of places where Blake elevates the imagination as “the central faculty of both God and Man”: for example, “Imagination is ‘the DivineHumanity’ ” (Jerusalem); it is “the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus” (Milton); “it is the Holy Ghost himself ” in his annotations to Dante. 69 W. Blake, “Annotations to the Laocoön” [c. 1826–7], in D. V. Erdman and H. Bloom (eds.), The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 274. 70 W. Blake, “A Vision of Last Judgment for the year 1810, Additions to Blake’s Catalogue of Pictures &c” [1810], in D. V. Erdman and H. Bloom (eds.), The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 560. 71 W. Blake, Joseph of Arimathea among The Rocks of Albion [1773], c. 1803–10. Engraving, second state. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. 72 W. Pullan, “ ‘Intermingled Until the End of Time’: Ambiguity as a Central Condition of Early Christian Pilgrimage,” in J. Elsner and I. Rutherford (eds.), Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 408–9. 73 S. Heffer, “BBC Proms: There’s So Much More to Hubert Parry than Jerusalem,” Daily Telegraph (July 10, 2010). 74 Ibid.; see also C. E. McGuire, “ ‘An Englishman and a Democrat’: Vaughan Williams, Large Choral Works, and the British Festival Tradition,” in The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 121. 75 Windsor-Clive, “Stepping Out with a Song,” np. 76 G. Hayward, “Singing as One: Community in Synchrony,” PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014, 3. 77 Hayward, in a correspondence with the author, September 11, 2017. 78 Parsons, correspondence with author, September 14, 2017. 79 “Man Sets Off on ‘Medieval’ Pilgrimage from Southampton to Canterbury,” BBC News (December 16, 2015), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35108393 (accessed July 26, 2018). 80 Collingwood, The Idea of History, 282. 81 V. Agnew, “What Is Reenactment?” Criticism, 46/3 (2004), 329, and at 355: “the shift from individualism to sociability along with conversion from ignorance to knowledge, resistance to compliance, and, importantly for our purposes here—from present to past—as aspects of the central narrative of reenactment.” 82 Parsons, “Pilgrimage: A Change is Afoot in Britain.” 83 A. Franks, “Walking to West Sussex: On a Modern English Pilgrimage,” The Guardian (November 12, 2016). Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/ nov/12/walking-holiday-london-sussex-pilgrimage-jerusalem (accessed July 26, 2018).

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84 Parsons, correspondence with author, November 12, 2017. 85 Ibid. 86 Although it is outside the scope of this project, it is interesting to note that Anselm Kiefer has visualized the lyric in a cycle of works exhibited at Salzburg Villa Kast (July 24, 2008–August 27, 2008) and a number of assemblages, one of which is in the permanent collection of SFMOMA: “Maria durch den Dornwald ging” [“When Mary Went Through the Thorn-Forest”], 1992, plants, lead, and gold leaf on canvas in a glazed steel frame. Available online: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.481. 87 Interview with Windsor-Clive, June 2017. 88 R. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), 94. 89 Interview with Windsor-Clive, June 2017. 90 J. Purce, The Mystic Spiral: Journey of the Soul (London: Thames & Hudson, 1980), 8. 91 Blake, “Milton: A Poem” (1804–10) in Purce, Mystic Spiral, 9. 92 R. Hamlyn, “William Blake at Work,” in J. H. Townsend (ed.), William Blake: Painter at Work (London: Tate, 2003), 36; and D. Cecil, Visionary and Dreamer: Two Poetic Painters—Samuel Palmer & Edward Burne-Jones (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 36. 93 Interview with Windsor-Clive, June 2017. 94 Purce, Mystic Spiral, 19. 95 W. Blake, “The Four Zoas” [1797], in D. V. Erdman and H. Bloom (eds.), The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 304–5; and M. Klonsky (ed.), Blake’s Dante: The Complete Illustrations to the Divine Comedy (New York: Harmony Books, 1980), 161–2. 96 Purce, Mystic Spiral, Figure 15—Crucifix, gilt bronze, Irish, seventh century and Figure 28, Initial Tau, Berthold Missal, Germany, early thirteenth century. 97 Windsor-Clive, sketchbook, np. 98 Interview with Kitty Rice, June 2017. 99 Ibid. 100 See also earlier, at p. x. This description of Victorine cycles of vision is in M. Camille, Gothic Art: Visions and Revelations of the Medieval World (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996), 17. 101 Blake, “A Vision of the Last Judgment,” 555. 102 Interview with Kitty Rice, June 2017. 103 A. S. Roe, Blake’s Illustrations to the Divine Comedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), 192. See also the letter from Blake, to Thomas Butts (November 22, 1802), in Damon, William Blake, 436. Now I a fourfold vision see, And a fourfold vision is given to me;

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104 A. H. Palmer, Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer (London: Seeley and Co.,1892), 24. 105 Samuel Palmer to Julia Robinson, December 9, 1872, in R. Lister (ed.), The Letters of Samuel Palmer, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), II, 872–3 and cf. letter 1862 (8), n.13. 106 See Barush, Art and the Sacred Journey, 179–82 for a detailed discussion of Blake’s theory of fourfold vision. 107 A. W. Schlegel, Athenaeum II (Berlin: Fröhlich, 1799), 204ff, in William Vaughan, German Romanticism and English Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 124 and n.5; for the construct of the “beholder’s share” see also Alois Riegl’s concept of “the beholder’s involvement” and, later, E. H. Gombrich’s “beholder’s share” expounded upon in his Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (London: Phaidon Press, 1960). 108 Interview with Kitty Rice, June 2017. 109 Karst, “A New Creation,” 31. 110 Kitty Rice, correspondence with author, September 27, 2018. 111 Kitty Rice, sketchbook, np. 112 See J. Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 59 and passim. 113 For an account of this complex history and how multiple groups shaped the culture(s) of Utah, see R. M. Embleton, “Racial Conflict in Early Utah: Mormon, Native American and Federal Relations” (August, 2019), Utah State University, All Graduate Plan B and Other Reports, 2019, No. 1407. Available online: https:// digitalcommons.usu.edu/gradreports/1407 114 O. Messiaen (December 10, 1908–April 27, 1992), Des Canyons aux étoiles, a twelve-part orchestral work that premiered in 1976. 115 O. Messiaen and H. Watts, “Canyons, Colours and Birds: An Interview with Oliver Messiaen,” Tempo, 128 (1979), 6. 116 Ibid., 7. 117 O. Messiaen, “Around an Organ Work,” in S. Broad, Olivier Messiaen: Journalism 1935–1939 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 134. 118 E. Hello, Paroles de Dieu: Réflexions Sur Quelques Textes Sacrés [1877], as quoted in Messiaen, titles and inscriptions to movements of From Canyons to Stars, in Stephen Schloesser, Visions of Amen: The Early Life and Music of Olivier Messiaen (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), 520 and n.40.

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119 Messiaen and Watts “Canyons, Colours and Birds,” 3. 120 S. Coleman and J. Elsner, Pilgrimage: Past and Present in the World Religions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 6. 121 P. Griffiths, in From the Canyon to the Stars, program book, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, 2016. 122 Messiaen, as cited in Schloesser, Visions of Amen, 519. 123 Hayward, in conversation with the author, June 19, 2020. For a book-length study of the relationship between art and material culture and religious praxis as it relates to post-Reformation pilgrimage in Britain, see Barush, Art and the Sacred Journey. 124 Parson, interview with author, September 1, 2019.

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Oakland → Ecuador Haciendo marcas otra vez—Making Marks, Again

Just after dusk on a cool November evening in 2014, anyone passing along the 1600th block stretch of San Pablo Avenue about three miles from the UC Berkeley campus would encounter an old blue bus parked in the road. A chalked sandwich board invited anyone passing by to “COME ON UP!” to see “Xbus: ART ON A BUS.” I was reminded immediately of the painted blue school bus at the Bread and Puppet Theatre farm in Glover, Vermont (Figure 4.1), parked out on the side of a rural route in the Northeast Kingdom with every possible surface, inside and out, scrawled with announcements about “cheap art” and invitations to come on in and up. I try to make an annual summer pilgrimage to the farm, which is the residential community and training ground for puppeteers who have been traveling throughout the US for sixty-five years performing Brechtian skits critiquing the current state of political affairs. As you can imagine, I am not using the term “pilgrimage” lightly; on the borders of the farm is a grove of pine trees where founder Peter Schumann often leads musical processions at sunset. The woods are filled with long shadows and ephemeral memorials erected for ancestors, puppeteers who had died, and many others—the Vermont poet Grace Paley who died in 2007, survivors of the Holocaust, family members.1 The bus, parked on the road leading to the grounds, contains hundreds of paintings, prints, and objects created on and with textiles, cardboard, and newspaper—the perfect pilgrimage souvenirs like the inexpensive lead badges carried back from Our Lady of Walsingham and Santiago de Compostela in the Middle Ages. As Schumann emblazoned on the 1984 manifesto (a copy of which I purchased in the barn and has hung in every office that I have occupied, Figure 4.2), and which he lectured to students at SUNY Purchase three years later, “ART has to be CHEAP & available to EVERYBODY. It needs to be EVERYWHERE because it is the INSIDE of the WORLD. ART SOOTHES PAIN! . . . ART SINGS HALLELUJA!”2 In the 1980s, when the cheap art project began, there were 157

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seventeen categories of artworks, stamped onto the objects which included “salvation from Reagan” (number 14), “salvation from other political disasters” (number 15) and “ex voto” (number 17). The categories are at once jocular and deadly serious, and Catholic concepts and figures have long fed into the Bread & Puppet repertoire with plays and booklets about St. Francis, St. Oscar Romero, and St. Joan of Arc. Schumann called the “cheap art” objects “type[s] of lifeassistance which art dares to offer.”3 Back in Berkeley, but very much reminding me of summer visits to the Glover farm, members of the community and families scrambled on board the old school bus and milled around outside. Some were looking up at the windows in a contemplative silence and others chasing after children (for whom a colorful bus is a naturally exciting playground). I learned that the bus had become an installation space, created by Oakland-based artist Gisela Insuaste and called Haciendo marcas otra vez (“Making Marks, Again”). I entered through the back doors, auguries into an embodied experience. The seats were removed and the ceiling reminded me of medieval barrel vaulting, but so low that my 6ʹ3ʺ companion had to duck down. The ceiling was crisscrossed with strands of colored tape in geometric forms, invoking, for me, the ballpoint graffiti on the fake green leather of the bus I took to school every day—stars and triangles,

Figure 4.1 Cheap Art Gallery/Bus, Bread & Puppet, Glover, VT. Photo: Devin Zuber.

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Figure 4.2 Peter Schumann, “the WHY CHEAP ART? Manifesto” (1984), Bread & Puppet Press, Glover, Vermont (postcard version). Collection of Author.

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lovers’ names inscribed in a heart. Later, I would learn that these particular marks had a much more somber origin. The bus somehow felt like a sacred space—the ceiling a medieval barrel vault, the lines of the tape the lead framework of stained-glass windows that contain each color. Completing my minipilgrimage down the bus, I eventually arrived at a dashboard altar containing a number of personal effects—a faded photo of a smiling couple on the lower East Side of New York City from the 1970s, an Andean textile, bits of moss, and jars of holy water labeled with tape and collected from Marian pilgrimage sites in Montserrat, Spain and Baños, Ecuador—confirming and solidifying what I had imagined as a church-like interior. Insuaste had first encountered the old blue bus in a darkened garage in San Leandro, California (Figure 4.3) and when her camera flashed she noticed the cracks and graffitied etchings on the windows, which formed the starting point of the matrices of tape. The bus itself dated from the mid-1980s and has had three distinct prior lives—it was first a prisoner-transport vehicle for Santa Clara County, California—and the people who were incarcerated had inscribed some of those etched marks that Insuaste saw illuminated by the camera flash. Later, the bus was decommissioned and bought by Seneca Spurling for use at a longterm camp at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. Finally, it was

Figure 4.3 Xbus parked in San Leandro, CA, pre-installation. Photo: Gisela Insuaste.

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donated to unexpected projects, a mobile public and community gallery which was featured on the Bay Area’s public media outlet and lauded as a way to “connect with disparate art communities and a wide range of audiences. Without a lease to tie them down and with access to an undeniably experimental project space, Xbus and unexpected projects are a testament to a current Bay Area ethos of adaptability and versatility—qualities often yielding the most interesting (and challenging) visual art.”4 The “roving art space” was curated by art historian Jennifer Stager (formerly a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and now a member of the art history faculty at Johns Hopkins University), and visual artist Jenny Salomon. Salomon had come to know Insuaste’s work after visiting her former workroom in Brooklyn, and subsequently she was among the small groups of Bay Areabased artists who were invited to see the space and conceive potential projects. The curators were energized by her ideas and Stager told me that they “didn’t know exactly what [Insuaste] planned, but we liked previous work of hers and trusted her to engage with the space. We were also very happy that she trusted us with her work—no small ask for an experimental project and two extrainstitutional [at the time of Xbus] curators.”5 Insuaste explained her initial ideas: I saw these marks as part of the personal and collective histories in the space, of unknown stories of people who have interacted with the bus in some way. The tentative title I started with (and which became the final title) was, “Haciendo marcas otra vez” which translates to “Making marks, again.” The project was about the traces (marks, markings) we leave behind. And how these connect to our past and our current spaces and places.6

The crisscrosses of tape (Plate 10 and Figure 4.4) can be understood as an abstraction of the literalness of the collection of personal souvenirs on the dashboard (Plate 11); the lines and forms of the tape give a visibility to the abstract stories inscribed on the windows. The window graffiti is transformed into gesture and then magnified and frozen in the form of tape. The passengers are memorialized as Insuaste leaves “a material trace of memory in order to dignify and sacralize their absent presences” while asking what “a culture build, construct, rewrite, assemble, and re-present to viewers in the face of deep loss, utter despair, and violence.”7 Insuaste is a mapper, a path-builder, a freezer-ofgesture into material forms, a shaper. She is also a pilgrim, negotiating space and collapsing temporal boundaries. With a focus on Haciendo marcas otra vez and some of Insuaste’s other closely related performance and installation pieces, this chapter focuses on the

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Figure 4.4 Gisela Insuaste, Haciendo marcas otra vez—Making Marks, Again (2014) (view from back of bus), installation of tape, wood, moss, wool, succulent plants, Andean textiles, and other objects on a decommissioned prisoner-transport vehicle. Image used with permission.

incorporation of religious objects, and especially those collected on pilgrimage or from pilgrimage sites, into contemporary art production with the intention of engendering the same type of multivalent viewing experience. It does so in part by bringing Insuaste’s art into dialogue with modern American painter, assemblagist, and pioneer of “Happenings” Allan Kaprow’s theory of “reinventions” and, like the other chapters in this book, by examining it in light of an augmented understanding of the Turnerian notion of communitas. On a broader level, the chapter also seeks to ask whether artists, curators, and museum educators today help audiences understand the performative, interactive, and multisensorial dimensions of devotional practices, past and present, and what it means for sacred objects to be recontextualized in a space like an old prisoner-transport bus converted into a roving contemporary gallery. Haciendo marcas otra vez is representative of much of Insuaste’s work in that it contains intentionally assembled objects, some found, others collected, and others still created—each giving visibility to stories of trauma and healing, and especially her own family’s

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experience of immigration from Ecuador to the US in the 1970s. Following Margaret Kovach’s approach of holding up story as Indigenous methodology, I aim to honor the “interrelationship between narrative and research,” allowing method and meaning to work in tandem to form a “culturally nuanced way of knowing” through Insuaste’s art-making and my own embodied viewership.8 Insuaste’s portfolio is rife with pilgrimage, from a site-specific performative piece that mapped and embodied her parents’ immigration experience by walking from site to site to designing shoes. One of these is a chukka boot inspired “by the curves and colors . . . encountered during my wanderings along a creek in the East Bay” (Figure 4.5).9 The recurrent theme is also the result of the transformative experience of walking the Qhapaq Ñan (Inca Trail) in January of 2003; after reading an early draft of this chapter, Insuaste invited me to her sunny studio in Oakland to look at her earlier drawings, which visually captured the pilgrimage. “In some of my earlier paintings and drawings, I was already exploring the landscape as a space of shining forms and energies, a place of life and tragedy,” she said. There were silhouettes of mountains, outlines of boots and feet (even perched on dashboards, another enduring theme), and the strings of rocks knotted on ropes she called “kipu” symbolizing protection and fertility (Figure 4.6). She recognizes that much of her work is based on the embodied “muscle memory” of that pilgrimage and describes the freedom she felt with her pack as well as “a deep sense of safe place, a connection to ancestors, and a reverence for their homes.”10 She also described the feeling of negotiating the liminal space of the peaks shrouded in mist, and the time that the curtain lifted and there was a sheer drop just feet away, but her footing had been sure, guided by something unseen. Later, back in the US, she drew the silhouette of the mountains on her studio wall to invoke that sense of safety, communitas, and home. Through objects and abstracted forms in a distinctive color palette engaged throughout her portfolio (evocative of Andean textiles and religious sculptures), Insuaste maps journeys of both despair and hope, inviting a tactile and embodied experience. Her work is about the stories of those on the margins and peripheries, and to both question and to celebrate cultural spaces and identities. The found objects are arranged, attached, collaged, hung, and stacked in such a way that encourages a perspectival shift from the viewer, as well as a moment of pause; just as Xbus was evocative of a sacred space where a ritual of altar-building and remembrance took place, by honoring and enshrining them, her other artworks and installations elevate found objects into catalysts of memory and imagination.

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Figure 4.5 Gisela Insuaste, Arroyo boots (2019), modified “chukka” style. Image used with permission.

Figure 4.6 Gisela Insuaste, Travels with Jack (2002, detail), ink and color pencil on paper, 54ʺ × 54ʺ. Image used with permission.

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With an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in Anthropology and Studio Art from Dartmouth College, Insuaste adroitly navigates the contemporary art world, both actively exhibiting work and teaching. Her major awards include the Smithsonian Institution Latino Museum Studies Program (LMSP) Fellowship, the MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and the Artadia/Driehaus Award and she has exhibited works at various institutions and galleries including the Bronx Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, New York, and the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. She has also been actively involved with the New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program in Oakland, which she addressed in a June 2019 interview for NYFA Current.11 In summer of 2019 she was chosen for a public art commission through the NYC School Construction Authority, Public Art for Public School (NYCSCA PAPS). The project, which will hang in the atrium of PS 254, was inspired by the wooden Ocean Avenue Bridge (connecting the school’s location in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood in southern Brooklyn with Manhattan Beach). Of the commission process, Insuaste notes that she is “interested in how the landscape and built environments shape our experiences. Tentatively titled ‘Crossings & Bridges’ the sculpture functions like a drawing in space, a process that mirrors my walks through cities and spaces.”12 Her work resonates with Georg Simmel’s ideas advanced in “Bridge and Door,” where he calls pathmaking and bridge-building “the greatest human achievement”; to him, the “miracle of the road” is the “freezing movement” into a structure that starts and terminates, making material the action of the gesture as Insuaste accomplishes in her work.13 Akin to the other case studies examined throughout this chapter, and book as a whole, the project is a conjunction of content, form, meaning, and process, and translating a site (in this case, a pedestrian bridge) from one place to another. Insuaste’s installations, sculptures, and performance pieces engage ritual praxis and objects in order intentionally to create an embodied experience for others. She acknowledges that while the formal elements of her work draw interest, such as the bright and distinctive color palette and collections of objects that inspire close-looking, it is her Latin American, Andean Indigenous, and Christian audiences who can interpret many of the more specific cultural references.14 A review of an exhibition at the Hopkins Center as part of Dartmouth’s Alumni Art Biennial in the culture journal Artscope underscores her intentional transfer of the spirit of the Ecuadorean landscape into the space of the gallery. As with Haciendo marcas otra vez, this is achieved through image,

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object, souvenir, and even the color palette and forms of the Andean landscape (“agricultural interventions, terraced, geometric fields”) and textiles that she so often incorporates into her sculptures (Plate 12): In a cooler palette of joyous pastels, Gisela Insuaste’s variegated slabs, trinkets and boxes resting on the floor and climbing the wall allude to the fields, forests, mountains and vernacular architecture of Ecuador and souvenirs of her life’s studies and travels. The title of her installation, “Mapeando”—the Spanish word for “mapping”—also evokes a site of fascination, the Ecuadorean Andes of her ancestral culture. A drawn “curtain” of twine grids in place a polychromed archipelago of painted plywood blobs that spreads across the wall. Its “islands”— crowded with fragments of wood, tiny figures, mirrors, a bus, basketry, and swatches of Indigenous cloth—cling together in a habitat of disparate meanings[.]15

For both artist and the person experiencing the artwork, the objects are charged with a trace of the landscape. Some are physically imbued, like the woolen textiles soaked with the vibrant matter of distilled and concentrated dye that comes from plants harvested in the high Andes, or glass jars containing water collected from geothermal springs. The objects can be touched and smelled, invoking sheep fields and laborers, mountains and ritual. The themes of mapping and translating landscapes from place to representation (as in her drawings and gestural line-making, as in the ceiling of Haciendo marcas otra vez) as well as through assemblage emerge again and again in her artistic productions. Insuaste’s process is an embodied one that engages a spontaneous choreography of gesture that results in marks which can be seen, touched, experienced, and imaginatively consummated by the viewer: I didn’t realize [that my work had a ritual aspect] until I started making installations and working with various materials and creating objects. The act of making things in space, of gestures, of moving and pausing are all part of the act of creating. Recently, the act of walking and drawing have become ritualistic as well.16

One of the key aspects of her artistic process that emerged again and again was the importance of “acknowledging the past and bringing it into the present” through ritual praxis, in which she independently engages the same language used by the BPT (Chapter 3).17 Chicago-based artist Darrell Roberts reflected that “The idea of a time capsule and an inner place of reflection are created in the

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experiences of viewing Gisela’s work.”18 Often, this happens through objects, both created through gesture like in the tape installation of Haciendo marcas otra vez or found, collected, and curated like the dashboard altarcito. She spoke of the inevitability of the idea of the transfer of “spirit” from site to representation, be it through a jar of holy water, a photograph, or the textile wrapped around the door handle. For this purpose, Insuaste had chosen an Andean faja, or woven wool sash that are wrapped around the waist. Faja can be wide or narrow and are usually brightly colored, often depicting symbols relating to nature. The one on the door handle of the bus goes beyond even a relationship to the people or nature of Ecuador; Insuaste describes wrapping her hair with it when it was long, and how the act of wrapping both hair and the door handle of the bus was an act of strengthening—in this case, strengthening people for their journey onward as they passed through those doors, entering and exiting. It also parallels the action of circumambulation, or negotiating circles and spirals with the body. “There is always an energy that surrounds those materials or objects I’ve collected. There are stories, either to share or to rest.”19 The element of storytelling was fundamental to the Haciendo marcas otra vez installation. Insuaste was either present to answer questions or, when she was not, Stager and Salomon would repeat what they had heard her saying, also adding an element of oral history transmission and complementing the idea of the voice and word as a container of spirit. Kovach has shown that story and knowing is inseparable, particularly in oral cultures. She emphasizes the role of the story as a vessel of knowledge, which in and of itself is connected to memory and tradition—through the story comes a multitude of wisdom that can “assist members of the collective” including medical knowledge and teachings.20 This is compatible with the notion of the “poetry of witness” that poet and human rights activist Carolyn Forché describes as “a mode of reading rather than of writing, of readerly encounter with the literature of that-which-happened, and its mode is evidentiary rather than representational—as evidentiary, in fact, as spilled blood.”21 In Haciendo marcas otra vez, the bus and the objects contained within it invite touch and emit smells. They are descriptors that work through the bodily sense, transcending the hegemony of sight alone. Through their history, they tell stories on their own terms—we can ask, like W. J. T. Mitchell has, “what do these images want?” because they no longer seem inert but rather charged with meaning.22 The wool on the dashboard is flecked with plant debris from the high Andes and the moss is growing under the urgent gestures hidden in the windows, magnified, and frozen in tape. Working together with the vibrancy of the matter itself is the

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equally important role of the object as a catalyst for human telling, retelling, and remembrance.

Objects as sites of extratemporal communitas: Xbus, holy water, religious images Objects like the faja were the catalysts for these conversations but also invited touch and interpretation on their own terms. Insuaste addressed the importance of objects and their agency in a recent podcast for (Un)making wherein Oaklandbased artist Weston Teruya hosts conversations with artists, arts administrators, and cultural workers of color. She recalls her time working at a history museum where she noticed that objects have “a certain power,” and addressed her own role in bringing together disparate things in order to “create a space” and tell stories, acknowledging, also, the response that is evoked from the viewer as collective memories are brought to the surface.23 David Morgan has written about the ecology of images that contributes to what we can think of as their agency—this network, or (with a nod to Latour) “assemblage of actors” includes the materials from which the image was made, the image-maker themselves, and the viewer. He invokes the idea of a “base” in a game of tag in which a tree or object is demarcated as a safe haven, recalling shrines or sacred sites which operate as sanctuaries and positing that “the analogical function of objects highlights the power of images in magic and enchantment. The object itself is not an idea or symbol, but an operator or agent. Its touch—tactile or visual—produces a tangible effect.”24 Roberts, who was present at the opening of Haciendo marcas otra vez, commented on how the space of the bus and assemblage of objects worked together to create an embodied sense of pilgrimage for the participant. He noted the “spiritual offerings” in the form of “tiny sculptures of art pieces, a bottle of liquor, succulent plants” which “become symbols of protection for travel,” as well as the seat cover made from an Ecuadorean textile that “is like a symbol [of] royalty”: This an area of protection for safe traveling surrounded by the offerings. Symbolically the bus becomes a memorial for life. A structure for protection and travel. A place for meditation and thoughts.25

These are enchanted objects, in Morgan’s framework, and different from magic, which is “part of a structured relation between client and operator” and reliant on privileged knowledge. Enchantment, conversely, “is about the life of

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things, their own power, what they can do.”26 Haciendo marcas otra vez was an object—a bus, a vessel—filled with objects. The frame of the bus became an inscribed container with a specific itinerary down its aisle; the dashboard became an altarcito where some participants remembered, and others hoped.27 There is a direct inheritance from, and indeed continuation of, the idea of souvenir pilgrimage objects as mnemonic devices, as a source of healing and protection, and even as extra-illustration in Haciendo marcas otra vez. Some of the religious souvenirs are from Catholic pilgrimage sites such as Montserrat and Baños de Agua Santa (a city in eastern Tungurahua Province of Ecuador) and some honor the Quechua culture and landscape. Insuaste’s pilgrimage along the Inca Trail was foundational to this later work, as we have seen, but so was an experience with a Catholic co-op/collective, Escuelas Radiofónicas Populares del Ecuador (ERPE). Several of her family members are linked to the organization, including Juanito Perez, her cousin’s husband, who was the long-time director. ERPE was founded by theologian Monseñor Leonidas Eduardo Proaño Villalba in 1962, and Insuaste described his commitment to empowering the disenfranchised, his advocacy of Quechua rights, and his distinctive poncho which signaled that he was “un hombre de la comunidad.” She volunteered with the organization during her formative years as an undergraduate and recalled memories of working on the organic farm. It was this fortuitous encounter that fostered her deep understanding of, and commitment to, imaging and protecting the landscape. Communitas expressed through art can also be transgressive: it is able to break “in through the interstices of structure, in liminality; at the edges of structure, in marginality; and from beneath structure, in inferiority. It is almost everywhere held to be sacred or ‘holy,’ possibly because it transgresses or dissolves the norms that govern structured and institutionalized relationships and is accompanied by experiences of unprecedented potency.”28 This can be applied to multiple aspects of Insuaste’s work. First, she is bringing ritual and sacred objects into what have been, conventionally, demarcated as secular spaces (the changing landscape of contemporary art and the museum world will be addressed later). Next, she is reclaiming, celebrating, and decolonizing the art of her Quechua Ecuadorean ancestors. Bringing traditional ritual objects, and objects from nature, into a modern art space creates a dynamism as temporal boundaries are collapsed and as stories are able to emerge. Finally, and even though this may seem counterintuitive, the incorporation of Catholic devotional objects is also something that is coming in “from beneath structure.” Keeping a souvenir in the form of water collected from a sacred site or displaying a print of the image of

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Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Agua Santa de Baños, both of which were placed on the Xbus dashboard and will be discussed in detail later, are exemplary of some of the acts of popular piety Pope Francis has defended as “theology of the people.”29 He encourages Catholics to listen and learn from the deep spirituality often expressed through embodied practices, especially by those who have been marginalized by economic structures and exclusionary power dynamics, and to stop with what he calls “ideological colonization.” This augmented understanding of communitas, mediated through culture, can be used to describe the connection to the past felt by artists and beholders when contact is made with a devotional object.30 Often, pilgrims report feeling the tangible presence of all those who have been to the site/shrine in the past, and all those who will come in the future—indeed, as I have argued, it can take on an extratemporal dimension in this way. According to Turner, communitas is enacted when lowliness and sacredness, homogeneity and comradeship are combined—what he called a “moment in and out of time.”31 Both the tape matrices and dashboard assemblage form an example of what can be described as an extratemporal communitas-through-culture, invoking the presence of ancestors, the people who rode on the bus, and the people who would encounter the objects as the exhibition moved to its next site. As Spurling reflected after having traveled with the bus for some time at Burning Man and in San Francisco, and then visiting the installation after it was repurposed as a gallery space: I was very moved by the neon tape. I really spent a while thinking about the people who had made the marks in the bus, wondering about their lives and their experiences in the bus, and being in awe and wonder and really thinking through how we shared in the experience of spending time—possibly very significant time for us, although in very different ways—in this space. I thought the installation was very powerful in that way.32

The perceived presence of the prisoners who had once ridden that bus were tangible for many of the people who attended the exhibition, represented in the tape matrices. Spurling felt this deeply, and thought, also, of the spontaneous community that had formed in the bus more recently at the festival. Others, still, felt the comforting presence of the saints remembered on the altarcito—the jars of holy water collected at shrines and a framed postcard of the Virgin Mary. Emerging independently from but compatible with this idea, recent scholarship in the field of medieval studies has established the importance of the agency of objects, for example pilgrimage badges and souvenirs—and their believed ability to engender

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an embodied experience and their believed “apotropaic” capacities.33 Some of Insuaste’s works incorporate physical traces of the landscape, such as volcanic ash, which serve to impregnate the piece with a memory of the sacred sites from which these indexical traces were collected. They relate, directly, to the pilgrimage souvenirs that Foster-Campbell calls “apotropaic,” and to the popular practice of incorporating soil or water from a pilgrimage site into a souvenir.34 Other pieces integrate vellum and gold leaf, such as Bukansan in the distance (stepping out/in), 2019, and were auctioned to support Artadia grants, further strengthen the connection to illuminated manuscripts through their very materiality. Throughout this chapter, and book as a whole, objects and music are seen as containers of history and memory, creating a transtemporal experience of communitas through aural and material culture. Haciendo marcas otra vez accomplished this through a diversity of objects—the gestural matrices of tape and the assemblage of souvenirs on the dash. However, the project can also be understood in light of a more canonical and Turnerian idea of communitas as a collective experience among participants in ritual. Stager commented on several aspects of this; the fact that the bus carried the history of its previous uses and Insuaste and both of the curators all being “drawn to the opportunity to make this history into something public and free”:35 The neon tape traced and then riffed off of the existing marks throughout the windows and roof of the bus, sketching with the marks that preceded hers . . . [Insuaste] also built the interior benches so that visitors would have somewhere to sit and talk with each other and to look at the installation . . . [she] created small sculptures to mark out the seats (and the people who sat). These small sculptures were placed, but could be easily dislodged, so [Insuaste] and even some of the visitors were often replacing them—stacking the small pieces (like colorful cairns) back into place—this led to a kind of collective maintenance of the installation over time[.]36

The interactive and community atmosphere of Haciendo marcas otra vez bear a similarity to archival photos which captured the “Environments” created by the Fluxus-era sculptor, assemblage artist, and theorist Allan Kaprow, who established the genre of Happenings and was a pioneer in what would become known as performance art. His art and theories, which highlight the possibility of collective, community experience, can fruitfully be brought into conversation with Insuaste’s work, in particular the Xbus installation and walking talking seeing being (2012, discussed in detail later). In the black-and-white photos of his

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Stockroom piece (Moderna Museet, 1960) a child lifts a cardboard box by a string; in his other Environments the faces of the participants span a range of emotions from bemused to awe-stricken. Later, critics would couch Kaprow’s work and even artistic lineage in religious rhetoric—Pierre Restany called Kaprow’s teacher, John Cage, the “guru of Black Mountain College, who was to rediscover Dada in the light of the Yi-King and the precepts of Zen Buddhism”37 and sees Kaprow as the one who “drew the most radical lesson from the process of active catalysts started by Cage.”38 Jeff Kelley calls another of Kaprow’s pieces, Eat (1964, Bronx) a “sacramental underworld of an underground cave” where visitors shared bread, wine, and fried bananas.39 Another environment, Apple Shrine (1960, originally built in the basement of Judson Church in NYC) involved a framework with three tiers, like a traditional Day of the Dead altarcito, on which hung a mix of nearly indistinguishable artificial and actual apples that the visitor was invited to take. Kelley described that “one might make one’s way through narrow lanes of crumpled newspaper, cardboard, chicken-wire, and straw toward an inner-sanctum of real and wax apples, whereupon one’s choice or the actual or the illusory fruit might constitute a rather Biblical metaphor for this art of everyday life.”40 In the “reinvented” version the apples were placed instead on shiny oil barrels, opening the piece to different, similarly nuanced interpretations (Figure 4.7). Kaprow’s concept of “reinventions” is useful in thinking about the idea of the transfer of spirit from place to representation, and especially the fact that the new pilgrimages are not necessarily reconstructions of the originals, but indeed take on a life of their own: I say reinventions, rather than reconstructions, because the works . . . differ markedly from their originals. Intentionally so. As I wrote in notes to one of them, they were planned to change each time they were remade. This decision, made in the late 50s, was the polar opposite of the traditional belief that the physical art object—the painting, photo, music composition, etc.—should be fixed in a permanent form.41

In his essay on the theory of reinventions, he emphasizes several points that not only resonate with Insuaste’s Haciendo marcas otra vez project but also many of the works examined through this book—the focus on not just the subject matter (which makes the installation interesting—“personal, socio-political, ritualistic”) but crucially the experience of all of this, which, as Kaprow emphasizes, is “physical, not intellectual”—in order to be an “experienced insight” it must be, in his words, “ ‘incorporated’, on a muscular, neural, or even cellular level, into the body.”42 That is to say that art must be embodied experience—contextual and immersive.

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Figure 4.7 Apple Shrine, reinvention of the environment by Allan Kaprow, Galerie J. & J. Donguy, Paris, France, September 1992. Photo: André Morain.

Along with the gold leafing and other intentional links to medieval manuscripts as mentioned earlier, there is also a relationship with traditional religious art in that the form and content of Insuaste’s works are inseparable. As Otto Pächt has said of medieval illuminated manuscripts, “the relationship between physical and non-physical, or form and content, is not something purely rational, like the correlation of text and illustration. It is irrational and magical.”43 Without wanting to be anachronistic here, since the context of medieval art and contemporary reinventions and installations is obviously quite different (and something that Pächt warns against), Kaprow does highlight the contribution of abstraction in understanding the limitations of subject-dominated art, and that is that “unless its forms, structure, setting, and usage are themselves qualities of the subject matter (i.e., consubstantial with it), the art work will remain only an

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illustration of a thought. It cannot be an experienced insight.”44 I am not suggesting that Kaprow was a religious or religiously motivated artist, but rather pointing out the importance of subject, content, and process as not only an embodied experience for the artist, but also for the person experiencing the artwork. In this case, the bus—the abstract lines, the contained space of the interior, and the altarcito objects all work together to create an immersive pilgrimage environment. Like a medieval psalter augmented with sewn pilgrimage badges (or, as Kathryn Rudy has shown, sometimes even Eucharistic hosts, which were also sewn onto medieval manuscript pages), the bus installation links to the past but also to an imagined future.45 This occurs both in the abstracted and geometric tape matrices, which Insuaste links to walking and embodied movement, procession and pilgrimage—as well as more literally in the souvenir objects collected from sacred sites. One is precise, modern, colorful—the other is messy, ritualistic, organic—and both work together to activate the space as a place where communitas can be engendered. The dashboard installation encapsulates these ideas of extratemporal communitas with its collection of personal items and sacred objects, invoking taxis and buses in Latin America and Asia, and among the immigrant communities across the USA. As Insuaste described, the interior space, specifically the dashboard, was also something that I considered for a while, as a space where drivers usually place and carry personal objects as they move through the urban landscape—talismans, spiritual objects, lucky charms, and other cultural materials meant to protect you during travel, for good luck and safety. I kept thinking about the local buses and taxis I’ve encountered in Latin America and Asia. Lots of personal/spiritual/pop culture all wrapped in one or a few objects displayed in vehicles, especially on the dashboards and hanging on the rearview mirrors.46

The bus was a mobile pilgrimage, in a way, and was able to circulate stories as it conveyed the installation from place to place, like a medieval mystery play where a guild of actors would travel on foot or in wagons from town to town dramatizing sacred stories in public spaces. The idea of an old school bus conveying the actors and props of a mystery play also formed the basis of the 1973 film version of Jesus Christ Superstar as the characters pour off the vehicle into the Jerusalem desert.47 Stager emphasized the community aspect of the mobile gallery in its circulation of art and narrative, “drawn on [Insuaste’s] experience of riding buses throughout Ecuador, and her altar with photographs and objects of personal importance brings this practice of bus drivers in Ecuador

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to the Bay Area and because Xbus moved, her own altar circulated in some of the same ways that the altars of bus drivers circulate.”48 One of the items on the dash was a framed devotional image of the Virgin Mary of Baños de Agua Santa, a city in central Ecuador, featured prominently on the dash (Figure 4.8). It was given to Insuaste by her mother and traveled with her from city to city, studio to studio.

Figure 4.8 Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Agua Santa, picture postcard in wooden frame. Collection of Gisela Insuaste.

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Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Agua Santa de Baños, or Our Lady of the Rosary of the Baths of Sacred Water, known to Insuaste and those who love her as the familiar and loving diminutive, Virgencita (or little Virgin), is a powerful and important symbol of fortitude for the people of Baños. She is much loved for protecting them (as any mother would) from the violent eruptions of the volcano Tungurahua. The geothermal springs of the region have been used by the Indigenous people of the region long before the Dominicans arrived in the sixteenth century, and are still considered to be sacred and healing by Catholics. Blair Niles, writing in the 1920s, recalls the invigoration that she felt while bathing at the springs, and her local guide Señor Vieira, who encouraged her to do so, replies simply that “it is well known that the waters are holy, for ever so long ago they were blessed by the Virgin of Baños.”49 The image of the Virgin is enshrined in a neo-Gothic basilica constructed of volcanic rock—the Basílica Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Agua Santa de Baños—a major site of pilgrimage as well as a sanctuary during volcanic eruptions. It is also considered to be a miraculous image; the sacristan of the old church in Baños reported that he saw the statue hovering in the air accompanied by two beautiful angelic companions who revealed to him a spring of water flowing from the mountain. An apparition of the Virgin then appeared before the priest the following night and asked for a basilica to be built, ensuring that the sick would be healed if they bathed in the water with faith in God. Eventually, the Basilica was constructed and the image installed there (one legend holds that it disappeared and miraculously reappeared in a mysterious chest carried to the Basilica by a donkey).50 The shrine became a major site of pilgrimage (and an annual one for many) where many miracles occur. The profusion of brightly painted milagros and ex-votos (in this case, in the form of devotional paintings given by pilgrims and often depicting the miracle in narrative iconography) that fill the church attest to the intercession of the Virgin. A fiesta is held there from October 7 to the end of the month in order to honor and give thanksgiving to the Virgencita with festivities including a special Mass, singing, and processions. Next to the image of the Virgencita were jars in which Insuaste had collected holy water, from a site of the Marian apparition at Fátima, and another from the home of an enshrined and enthroned image of the Black Madonna at Montserrat, near Barcelona. Insuaste spoke to the importance of the jars of water collected from these sites in a way that again resonates with the theory of communitas, addressing the “presence of these [shrines] to the Virgin” and the “roles of

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bringing people together and water being sacred within the Indigenous community, it ties in with that—it’s a sacred and necessary thing that we have in our lives, to go back to Ecuador and the landscape [and my own] Indigenous roots, as well.”51 As in the thermal waters of Baños, ancient and healing before the missionary priests arrived, at wells all over Ireland and the United Kingdom, and even at Montserrat (which some say was previously a Roman site devoted to Venus)—there is a continued overlay and, in some cases, intermingling of Catholic and Indigenous beliefs. Art becomes an index of these colonial histories; they “contain the movement of colonial histories through time and these geographic locations.”52 There has been much written on the adaptation of the Andean people to what was a strange and new religion being imposed on them through the incorporation of symbols from an ancient cosmology onto images of the Virgin, which “became a means of insuring, in a fractured world, the survival of ancient ritual.”53 Encountering the jars of water on Xbus that evening in November felt almost prophetic for me, as a few months later I was to embark on pilgrimage to Montserrat with twelve graduate students along the Camino Ignaciano, and we had just begun the planning and preparatory work.54 The image of the Black Madonna, which we were to visit, is of indeterminate origins and attached to many legends and oral histories; some say that it was carved by St. Luke during biblical times and then carried to Spain by one of the apostles. It is the site of many professed miracles and attracts over a million pilgrims a year. I asked Insuaste about the water and she explained that she had the opportunity to visit the monastery and caves during a Can Serrat International Residency. The strange, knife-like edge of the landforms resonated with Insuaste, who noticed the forms again during a visit to Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia and Parc Güell in Barcelona. In this case, it was Gaudí who was translating a sacred landscape and “rural Catalonian vernacular” to his own architectural designs.55 In Insuaste’s artwork and at the sites themselves, there is a continued syncretism of Catholic and Indigenous beliefs.

Mapping the sacred landscape: Quechuan and Catholic contexts Artistic production which honors more than one culture or system of belief can provide an important lens for interreligious dialogue.56 In this case, there is a conjunction of Catholicism and the beliefs that were already in place before

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missionary activity began. Already “[e]thnographic and ethnohistoric studies have shown the that the interplay of customary and collective actions among humans and between humans and non-humans or supernatural agents, through the ritual mixture of Catholicism and Indigenous practices in both South America and Mesoamerica.”57 This is something that Insuaste is constantly exploring and investigating in a perhaps more intuitive, visual, and deeply embodied way through her artistic production. She acknowledges the importance of the “Indigenous cultural beliefs with the land” with recourse to her own family who worked on the land in Ecuador for generations, as well as specific communities she has spent time with: In the Quechuan context, there’s an energy in the land. It is tragic, traumatic, the power, the beauty—it is overwhelming. In my drawings and paintings I ask: how do I tap into that landscape where there is trauma where there is this energy and shifting that happens, the land shifts and we shift with it and when it happens— like with volcanoes—the physical disruptions and tension? It goes back to politics and economics. When I started to go to Ecuador in college more often— it was the first time I was there on my own terms and figuring out what this means, and connecting to the land. As kids we were climbing mountains, and as an adult, there was a more spiritual journey I had to figure out on my own. All to say this is—with the dashboard—a bringing of these objects into the space, abstracting them into something more personal. The dashboard has a photo of my parents in ’74, with a background of the Lower East Side [after they immigrated to the US], they were young, there were rooftops—it was a journey— there were wrappings of my own hair wrapped in orange and red thread, textiles I collected from a community of monks in Northern Thailand that I bought at a market, there was ash from the active volcano in Ecuador when I was there in 99/2000, not only was there water from Baños but some from Montserrat and maybe some water from Fatima . . . there [were] a lot of pieces from previous installations, I started to just break them apart and cut them up and see them into little landscapes, putting things together and taking them apart . . . little ones all along the bus towards the middle, those I saw as little landscapes. This was also an acknowledgment, or marker, of where the seats had once been on the bus. I started seeing those wooden pieces, the rubber pieces of the vacuum cleaner belts as little containers of these sorts of landscapes that I took apart and put together. The physical action of doing that—putting them together it’s like a puzzle, what fits, what doesn’t—obviously there’s design and color component but also piecing it together, taking it apart, moving it around . . . Nothing is permanent, in a way that gives me freedom to combine things, to bring something

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from that immediate space into this installation, into this altar . . . it was bringing a little bit of myself.58

As Insuaste describes, the recycled wood of previous artworks contains a trace of those earlier installations as well as the landscape itself—a true “medial shift,” pace Wood. In this case, they become a memorial for the incarcerated people who traveled in the now-absent seats. Roberts noted these memorials, and likened them to ex-votos, writing that “the little wrapped sculpture pieces on the floor are like symbolic offerings given on a pilgrimage after reaching a destination.”59 The dashboard assemblage, with the objects that Insuaste mentions above as well as succulent plants in pots and a nearly empty bottle of tequila, was indeed evocative of an altarcito, a little altar which is a place of memory and connection in Catholic Latin American popular piety. They are now a relatively well-known way of honoring and remembering deceased family members and ancestors as part of Day of the Dead celebrations throughout Mexico and the US, but they are also found in homes throughout Latin America (and also in Asia—in Catholic, Buddhist, and Daoist households in which various systems of belief intersect). Sometimes family members of different faiths will participate in a multi-religious home altar. Insuaste has emphasized finding common ground across cultural and religious boundaries. In an interview in 2017, she recalled her work at El Museo Del Barrio where she has participated in exhibitions (such as the 2011 Bienal) and, additionally, served as the manager of school and education programs between 2008 and 2011. She addressed Day of the Dead as well as other “culture celebrations” saying, “they are part of our history, they are part of our culture and here we can celebrate that—realizing that but also finding connections to other cultures and other places—the idea or belief of memory, honoring our ancestors—it isn’t just with Day of the Dead, it happens in other cultures as well, there’s always going to be something that connects us all in cultural beliefs or certain types of practices.”60 Making an altar of remembrance for Day of the Dead is a practice using “sacramentals,” which can be thought of as “sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments.”61 For Catholics, these “little altars” are inherently connected to the “big altar”—a place of ritual remembrance where, during Mass, the gathered community beholds and prepares to consume the body of Christ, sharing in the sorrow of His death and eschatological hope in the ongoing promise of resurrection. The vernacular and liturgical versions are both places to gather, to remember, and to be nourished in body and spirit: places where communitas is enacted.

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Haciendo marcas otra vez relates to several other pieces of Insuaste’s including a New York City–based 2012 performative piece, walking talking seeing being: love, labor and faith on 14th St (Vacuum Story Pt 1). It was performed twice over the course of a weekend in October, and culminated in attending Spanish and English-language Masses (Figure 4.9). The piece more explicitly draws from Insuaste’s Catholic heritage, which is explored in her work both in terms of popular piety and institutional practice. While Haciendo marcas otra vez engages pilgrimage objects and embodied movement in a contained (yet mobile) interior, walking talking seeing being involved taking to the streets of New York where Insuaste physically (re)traced her family’s story of arrival and settlement on the Lower East Side of New York after immigrating from Ecuador in 1973. Her artist statement describes the goal of seeking to connect their story to the history of the city. Insuaste built a mountainous structure of bits of colored wood on an old vacuum cleaner which, for her, became “a symbol of transformation and perseverance, shaping our identity and the American Dream” and then followed an itinerary down Fourteenth Street.62 She started the journey at Desco Vacuum

Figure 4.9 Gisela Insuaste, walking talking seeing being: love, labor and faith on 14th St (Vacuum Story Pt 1) (2012) [Still], latex acrylic on wood, antique canister vacuum cleaner, rubber vacuum cleaner belts, dimensions variable.

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Cleaner (131 West Fourteenth Street), where her father first worked upon arriving in New York, proceeded to the former Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (229 West Fourteenth Street) where she was baptized, a site culturally significant as the very first Spanish-speaking Catholic parish in the city. When the space could no longer physically accommodate the growing Mexican population, it merged with St. Bernard’s Parish to create the Santuario de Nuestra Señora Guadalupe at St. Bernard’s at 328 West Fourteenth St.63 The journey culminated there with Insuaste attending both the English and Spanish Masses on October 12 and 14, in a manner consistent with traditional pilgrimage. Pilgrimages can take various forms and are an important and sometimes even prescribed or obligatory part of many religions. Walking in an intentional way to seek healing, as a form of meditation, or to reach a destination personally demarcated as “sacred” or extraordinary is also a part of the spiritual lives of people who do not subscribe to a particular religion. Insuaste’s walking talking seeing being: love, labor and faith on 14th St., however, resonates with aspects of traditional Catholic pilgrimage as encouraged in the Directory of Popular Piety with an emphasis on the connection to the gospel and the liturgy: “Pilgrimage is a universal religious experience and a typical expression of popular piety. It is invariably connected with a shrine, for which it is an indispensable component.”64 First, the performance culminated at a Marian sanctuary which is, in and of itself, a “translation” of the major pilgrimage basilica dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe near Tepeyac in Mexico City. The sacred tilma, or cloak, on which the Virgin’s image miraculously appeared to St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474– 1548) in December of 1531 and remains today, is enshrined at the site and visited by millions of pilgrims annually. It is one of the most popular Catholic pilgrimages in the world (along with Lourdes and Fatima). The project was an act of recalling and celebrating her family’s history, beliefs, and piety. My point here is that there is nothing implicit about the pilgrimage aspects of this particular piece. It is explicit in all aspects, from the intentions at the outset of remembrance and connection to Insuaste’s participation in two liturgical celebrations. Another important aspect of pilgrimage that was embodied in the performance is the sense of renewal that occurred for Insuaste; this relates to the fact that earthly pilgrimage, for a Christian, always mirrors the pilgrimage of life through a broken world toward the hope of heaven. Insuaste recalled a moving and significant moment at the Spanish Mass, where she overheard a child asking about the mountain-like structure that she was pulling, made of colored pieces of wood. The child’s mother likened it to a fogata—a bonfire. She felt as though

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that woman who witnessed the piece really understood her intentions, and in an interview discusses the profundity of that moment, which spurred her to reflect on the cleansing and renewal aspects of the piece, and leading her to wonder what would have happened if she had decided to torch it when finished.65 Again, in this idea of burning, cleansing, and renewal (as in a forest fire which clears away the underbrush) there is a relationship to traditional practice, whether intended or fortuitous. I already mentioned the metaphorical nature of all placebased pilgrimage for Christians, and the Directory of Popular Piety suggests that shrines represent “an encouragement to cultivate an eschatological outlook, a sense of transcendence and to learn to direct their earthly footsteps towards the sanctuary of Heaven.”66 In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a Reformation-era pilgrimage narrative that emphasized not so much place-based practice but an inward journey toward Christ, the protagonist carries a burden in the shape of a pack, representing the sins which he is able to cast off upon reaching the Celestial City. In a popular practice, this sometimes takes the form of collecting a rock or stone ascribed with a symbolic status (sometimes representing a vice or something the pilgrim wants to let go) and then leaving it somewhere along the way. The place it is left can be specifically demarcated for such a purpose, like the Cruz de Ferro in Spain—a monumental cross over a mountain of such stones along the Camino de Santiago.67 It can also be a private experience—when I was with a group of students in Montserrat, many cast stones like this over the mountain into the natural and wild valley below. There is a sense of hopeful renewal for Catholics that comes with the celebration of the Sacrament of Penance where sins are confessed to a priest and forgiven by God. This was an important aspect of traditional pilgrimage practice, and even today there are confessionals (labeled with the multiple languages spoken) at most major European pilgrimage shrines. Even the scallop shell, an age-old souvenir of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and used as an attribute of St. James in medieval art, is a symbol of the Sacrament of Baptism with its vessel-like shape perfect for pouring water. It is a rite of ritual purification, regeneration, and renewal. Insuaste left behind material mementos in the form of painted woodpieces and black vacuum belts that she had stacked on her arms like bracelets (remembering the kids that used to come into her father’s shop to buy them for that purpose, inspired by the pop musician Madonna, as she recalled in an interview). She also used these rubber rings to connect the mountain of wood stacked on vacuum, which became a sort of wagon, or cart and to hold them in

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place. There were different sizes of rings and other mementos and tokens made of various materials, including silver and copper which had a dual meaning both as a signal of the “bling” of Latin American hip-hop culture as well as the earth metals that she remembers her uncle applying to the body as a way to cleanse from illness and affliction (Plate 13). The offerings were bound with wool, which she had carried back from Ecuador in 2004, and thread in the colors of Gran Colombia, the Ecuadorian flag, both used as a strengthening wrap, symbolic of protection, as in her other pieces. As natural fibers containing dye and soil, the material was particularly imbued with the trace of the landscape from which it was collected. The project, with its elements of giving, leaving, and carrying, was an opportunity to engage the participants as well as physically to feel the weight of her family’s story in an embodied way while also helping it to live on. In the podcast for (Un)making, Teruya likened the vacuum belts in another piece to bumpers that offer protection, which resonated with Insuaste.68 They also appear on the Haciendo marcas otra vez dashboard altar. In the Middle Ages, protection was one of the things that pilgrims asked of saints through the material reminder of the souvenir collected on the journey. This would have taken the form of a badge with some kind of saintly iconography stamped onto it or perhaps an ampulla of holy water (sometimes tinged with the blood of a saint or the dust collected from her tomb);69 in popular practice, this could be kept as a souvenir, as a catalyst for storytelling about the saint or the journey, or a way to spread the blessings gleaned to others. The assemblages of objects on Xbus function together to recall an Ecuadorean landscape of trauma and healing. Religious practices and sacred objects from the traditions of the Quechua, Incan, and Puruhá people of Ecuador are enmeshed in Haciendo marcas otra vez and throughout Insuaste’s oeuvre. Objects like the diminutive (in physical scale only) landscapes marking the absent seats up and down the aisle of Xbus and the Andean textile wrapped around the door handle in a gesture of protection all invite a tactile and imaginative response from the viewer. As Roberts later reflected on the installation, “Benches inside the bus allow a person to sit and contemplate the tiny wrap sculptures on the floor. Are they individually wrapped pieces of memories from her life? Do the lines on the ceiling reflect her traveling from Ecuador to America, America to Ecuador, back to American while growing up to the present?”70 The objects work together as reminders of another place and another time, and a viewer that can interpret their cultural messages is immediately connected to their community. Insuaste talks about invoking the spirit of the Apus, the Quechua word that describes the

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protective spirits of the Andes. It is through the Apus that the landscape of Ecuador is translated into her work. She writes: The Apus are who I acknowledge when I ride my bike across the Oakland Hills . . . when I take the ferry across the river or swim in the cold ocean . . . those spirits are everywhere—in the cracks of a sidewalk where weeds push through the cement, in the lichen of a tree that has fallen. Gestures, whether they [are] made with my hands, my body, or a tool, [create] a line in space that connects heart, mind, and the physical environment.71

These Apus are part of the Pachamama, the Great Mother who is the earth itself—the one who sustains and nourishes, but can also destroy through great earth forces like lightning and earthquakes.72 The more-than-human73 earth beings have different degrees of agency “and geographies of influence, which create nested hierarchies of reach.”74 For Insuaste, this manifests as a deep reverence for the mountain guardians and spirits who can be called upon for guidance and protections. She sees them as also bringing about a perspectival shift and her own feeling of becoming “just a speck” in their midst; “just another animal” next to them, and, as she reminds us—they, too, are just as alive.75 It is important to acknowledge the deeply political dimensions of the (re)clamation of the landscape and, as explored here, representations and translation of geographic loci. Sarah Radcliffe explores this in a chapter on “Pachamama, Subaltern Geographies, and Decolonial Projects in Andean Ecuador” acknowledging the “human interactions with earth-beings [which] coconstitute life . . . traced by scholars back to pre-Columbian history” but highlighting in particular “their maintenance today by political organizations during struggles with a postcolonial state hegemony.”76 Pachamama has been invoked in political protests by activists who have established rights for nature (and, by default, for Pachamama) in the 2008 constitution77 but “the operability and status of Pachamama rights continue to be foreclosed by dominant epistemic and political economic relations . . . Pachamama and . . . earth-beings comprise a register of [I]ndigenous struggles.”78 Macarena Gómez-Barris has explored the YASunidos coalition of artists, Indigenous activists, land defenders, and all those who have worked to protect the land from resource-extraction projects and drilling, pointing to “Pachamama’s right to exist and thrive” which is central to “Indigenous cosmologies within the Andean-Amazonian region, and a view of a positive relation to the natural world that must be considered with more depth.”79 GómezBarris points to the value of Indigenous-led ecotourism, wherein these “modes

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of perceiving” can be shared with open-minded foreigners leading, perhaps, to environmental awareness.80 It is through the practice of ritual and, I would argue, especially in light of Insuaste’s work—artistic representation, becomes a way to connect to landscape, history, memory, and nature, perhaps especially for the diaspora community. The water collected in jars, the moss, the plant dyes of the textiles in Insuaste’s art, and the wool into which they are imbued, all call attention to the importance of environmental stewardship through an honoring of the spirit embedded in these objects. In the field of Andean archaeology, recent scholars have turned their attention to non-monumental contexts such as mountain shrines and vernacular structures in order to explore the overarching idea that rituals are “social action that address non-human81 agents . . . tying humans to spirits, gods, ancestors, animals, and objects.”82 There are a few pieces of Insuaste’s that could be examined in this light, for example a 2004 architectural intervention entitled Offerings to la Pachamama (Figure 4.10). The piece incorporated deeply symbolic elements including a woven rope armature and two shell-shaped ceramic bowls that Insuaste collected in Peru on the way back from Ecuador. The bowls contained panela—a type of sugarcane candy. Panela, wrapped in leaves, was also suspended low on the woven ropes, evoking seeds or fruit. On the ground is a bottle of the Güitig mineral water popular throughout Ecuador and an opaque vessel that once held Cachaça, a Brazilian distilled spirit but emptied and replaced with a sugarcane-based aguardiente, anise flavored and often served at festivals. Insuaste has spoken to me about the connection between regional products like grain, corn, and moonshine; “We call it ‘trago’ (something you swallow) or ‘aguardiente’ which literary means ‘hot water.’ Certain regions will produce their own—for example, the ‘pajaro azul’ is un trago from Guaranda [a small town in Bolívar province, not far from Chimborazo volcano].”83 The offerings of agricultural products and woven ropes recall aspects of her family’s culture and her own memories of a childhood in Ecuador. Two glasses sit next to the bottles—an invitation and sign of gratitude to the great earth mother who birthed the vibrant matter that the installation comprises. Like the pilgrim, the products have gone through long processes of transformation and change from one state to another. They were cultivated in the womb of mother earth, harvested and then transmuted through chemical process put into motion by the work of human hands. It would have required movement and gesture to install the piece, with its wrapped wire-and-wood armature, hanging elements, and balanced objects, and

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Figure 4.10 Gisela Insuaste, Offerings to la Pachamama (2004), woven rope, wire, ceramic bows, vessels, liquor, glasses, panela, leaves. Image used with permission.

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Insuaste has emphasized the importance of “creating a space with your body, not just for you but to share with others.”84 Insuaste’s process is adaptive; she uses the materials she has available, collecting and curating from street to studio using whatever resources she has to hand. Her offering to the Pachamama is based on an intuitive process. Still, there are elements that form part of the traditional practices, celebrations, and spirituality of Peru. Rufino Turpo (son of the late Nazario Turpo, guardian and Pacco ritual master of the sacred Ausangate Mountain) discussed the process of making an offering to the Pachamama in a 2015 interview. There are distinctions between regional traditions, but also some commonalities, and some of the elements that Turpo recalls are reflected in Insuaste’s piece, and it is compelling to bring them into dialogue. Akin to her process of creating art, the ritual he describes here involves walking, gesture, and remembrance: On the first day of Chajrayapuy (August), our family gathers to make a “payment” or offering to the Pachamama. Like us, she needs to eat and drink. Whenever we drink chicha, beer, or wine, we need to share it with her . . . I go down from the house slowly. When I walk, I remember the names of my town’s Apus (mountain spirits)—Ausangate, Cayangate, Colque Cruz—their yanas (mates), as well as the masis (companions). I also remember the names of the Apus I’ve met in other villages . . . We make a bed of coca leaves. On it, we place a mullu (Spondylus shell) from the Mama Cocha, and on it the mullu wira, or llama tallow, representing Wiracocha (life’s energy). On the tallow, we add gold and silver, corn, qañihua (Chenopodium Pallidicaule goosefoot), wiracoya (incense), peanuts, lima beans, candy, and more. We offer all this for Pachamama to eat, and in return she provides for us and protects us.85

Like Insuaste, the process of making the offering includes a walking pilgrimage of thanksgiving (we remember her bike-rides and perambulations through Oakland remembering the Apus); vessels, agricultural offerings, and the sense of not just vastness but protection that the Andean mountains offer, even from afar. In the piece portal de lana y madera (2014–17, Figure 4.11) the sacred landscape is again transferred into the once-secular space of the gallery, which is itself completely transformed through these assemblages and interventions. I opened the chapter describing my feeling of the doors of Xbus functioning as auguries into an experience, and this piece, too (even in name) evokes a portal. Thin, intersecting branches are protected in textile wrappings and from them hang a variety of talismanic objects, all recalling either bits of personal history or the landscape. The sticks are evocative of pilgrim staffs, propelling the walker through the landscape. I

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Figure 4.11 Gisela Insuaste, portal de lana y madera (2014–17), wood, Ecuadorian wool, rubber vacuum cleaner belts, twine, copper wire, bottlecap, fabric, ceramic, thread, metal tape, raw cotton, wood shavings, matches, and other found materials, dimensions variable (approx. 6ʹ high × 5ʹ wide, corner piece).

have already discussed the vacuum cleaner belts, and they (re)appear here along with the photo of Insuaste’s parents in the Lower East Side of New York City after they immigrated from Ecuador. Other objects that she collected are present, including wool (she once brought back pounds of it while backpacking and later found the smell and feel of it to be transporting), also twine, copper wire, a bottlecap, fabric, ceramic, thread, metal tape, raw cotton, wood shavings, matches, and other found materials. There is also moss, which, like the wrappings, evokes a sense of protection. In the (Un)making interview, Insuaste reveals that it is moss that is used to line the creche in nativities in Ecuador, providing a safe cushion for the tiny statue of the baby Jesus. Moss is also part of the landscape, used as a healing herb in some cultures, and has a number of connotations depending on what the viewer brings to the piece. For Insuaste, though, there is a strong connection to the Niñito, or baby Jesus. For her, it was the experience of carrying the clothed statue of Niñito as part of a procession in Ecuador that is absolutely exemplary of the connection between walking, communitas, material culture of religion, and the later transfer of this “spirit” into an installation piece. Describing the powerful experience of participating in the procession, she recounted, “there’s something to be said about

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an action you do in a group of so many people, there’s a certain power—it’s like this energy or moment of vulnerability that I hadn’t experienced.”86 Bronx-based visual and performance artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo, who has worked with Insuaste and has spent time with her work, commented on her practice and specifically the symbolic figure of el Niñito. Estévez Raful Espejo, too, engages walking and pilgrimage extensively in his practice and in addition to an MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, holds an MA from Union Theological Seminary. He wrote: Pilgrimage has been traditionally understood as a movement towards the sacred in ways that imply physical travel, as in walking. In Gisela Insuaste’s case, I am interested in the more psycho-emotional aspects of the journey, one that takes place in the mind and heart of the pilgrim, and where emotions and remembrances supplant kilometers and steps. Central to Insuaste’s narrative is the figure of el Niñito, an icon of baby Jesus that has been in her family for 44 years, and that has assumed the role of a repository of migratory experiences across national, economic, and cultural borders. While currently located in Ecuador, where Insuaste’s parents live, el Niñito continues to be part of a transgenerational story, serving as a steadfast marker, a point of return, to which relatives can travel to mentally from wherever they are, much like the cyberspace trekking many of us now take for granted.87

The moss on which el Niñito lies has become a powerful symbol for Insuaste and appears in most, if not all, of the pieced discussed here—in walking, talking, seeing, being it was left on the church gates as a little offering and it is even included in the dashboard altarcito of Xbus. As Estévez Raful Espejo emphasizes, the icon has become a “repository of the migratory experiences”—a vessel of remembrance of the difficult journey across landscapes familiar and foreign. In Chapter 3, the idea of music as a container, or vessel, of the sacred and, specifically, the practice of singing and chanting as a way to enact this kind of extratemporal communitas is explored in detail. Although we have been focusing on her visual art production, music is also a medium that Insuaste has used to make the past present and to translate the landscape of Ecuador into the spaces of the diaspora. Her grandfather was the music director of a parish in San Juán, her father played accordion and harmonica, and she remembers the records that he brought with him when he immigrated to New York. She is exploring, more and more, sacred soundscapes in her artwork as “another time-based element” that is an important part of transforming memories and history in to an embodied experience. This happens through a conjunction of sound, melody

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(“the first chords of a cumbia, and my heart hurts”), and gesture.88 Reflecting on recently taking up the accordion, she asks, “what are these objects that we sort of imbue with power and with personal connections? How do I make [them] my own, how do I bring [them] into this present time?”89 She talks about having instruments like Andean panpipes and charango in her home, and how their very presence called her to want to “activate them” and “participate” in their ability to tell stories and embrace a cultural memory; “It’s beyond function,” she told me. “It’s magic. It’s spirit, it’s voice.”90 walking, talking, seeing, being also ended up becoming entwined with an aural component when the band Easy Lover used footage of the pilgrimage shot by Lawrence Kim to create a music video for their song “New Maggie.”91 portal de lana y madera, too, has an aural element if we think of the crossing sticks as pilgrim staffs. They can be seen, as she pointed out, as gestural lines; an extension of the body. As the walker negotiates the landscape, the stick accompanies the footfalls like a quiet percussion beat.

Widening the lens: religious art in the contemporary artworld Through sacred art and music, some of Insuaste’s work can be seen as interventions in spaces that have traditionally privileged secular discourse, such as galleries and perhaps even in the world of music videos.92 Widening the aperture, it is important to address the place of religious objects and modern and contemporary art audiences, which was the topic of a panel Stephanie Nadalo (Parsons, Paris and the New School) and I organized and co-chaired as part of the February 2019 annual meeting of the College Art Association. Founded in 1911, the CAA (among other things) “facilitates the exchange of ideas and information among those interested in art and history of art” and “speaks for the membership on issues affecting the visual arts and humanities.”93 I was delighted when Nadalo approached me to put forward a session which sought to address several issues relating to the (re)contextualization of sacred objects in museums (and, as was the subject of my particular paper, contemporary art).94 The session abstract is worth quoting at length, as it succinctly encapsulates some of pressing questions in the field today: From painted altarpieces to prayer rugs and reliquaries, museums are filled with objects originally created for use within a devotional or ritual practice. However, once removed from an overtly religious context and reframed within a public

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museum or art space, the function, audience, and perceived agency of these artifacts can change, as do the expected rules of viewer engagement. By exploring the intersection of art history, anthropology, and religious studies, this panel adopts a comparative and diachronic perspective to understand the historical and conceptual dynamics governing such acts of mediation for modern and contemporary audiences. Whereas museum professionals of the 19th century tended to separate the beliefs and practices of religious devotion from the aesthetic and pedagogical aims of the museum, scholars today increasingly recognize that the distinction between ritual devotion and a more objective aesthetic appreciation can be blurry. In the mid-1990s, Carol Duncan acknowledged the secular museum’s role within the staging of civic rituals. More recently, Crispin Paine and others have addressed the spiritual dimensions of contemporary art and the curatorial challenges of displaying sacred artifacts for heterogenous publics. Once religious material culture is displayed to audiences within museums of fine and decorative art, ethnography, and history, how does the process of musealization transform an object’s narrative potential? Although the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment museum paradigm privileges visual faculties above tactile or auditory, how can curators, artists, and museum educators today help audiences understand the performative, interactive, and multisensorial dimensions of devotional practices past and present? What role can museum and art institutions play in promoting respectful pluralistic dialogue among heterogeneous audiences?95

The panel attracted a variety of professionals in the field who represented museums (including the Guggenheim), universities (including the Yale University Center for the Study of Material & Visual Cultures of Religion), and centers such as the American Academy of Rome. The discussion that was sparked there continued throughout the conference in various venues, and I left New York with the sense that it is crucial to continue to develop critical frameworks to talk about the efficacy and potency of religious objects in contemporary art. Haciendo marcas otra vez formed one of the case studies examined in the paper I contributed to the panel, which has subsequently been developed into this chapter.96 I later asked Stager whether curators, artists, and museum educators today can help audiences understand the performative, interactive, and multisensorial dimensions of devotional practices, past and present and how she saw Haciendo marcas otra vez fitting into this kind of conversation: [C]urators, artists, and museum educators can (and should) help audiences to understand devotional practices. I think of Gisela’s installation as something of a visual exploration of personal devotion, as well as institutional critique and

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remaking. Our project with Gisela did not include huge amounts of documentation, but it did include direct engagement and oral history. Unlike an exhibition in a museum, one or both of the curators and/or the artist were present when people moved through the installation (someone had to run the generator). On the nights that Gisela was present, she spoke with visitors about the installation and we spoke about the history of the bus. On nights when she was not present (most of them), we tried to summarize what she had told us and/or we’d overheard her saying. In this way, conversations rose up in the space.97

The idea of institutional critique and remaking is key as conversations about the recontextualization of sacred objects continue to happen in the academy. Case studies could include the surprising number of religious pilgrims who turned up for a recent exhibition of reliquaries at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore (“Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe”) or the controversy surrounding the “Spectacular Miracles” show at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The latter featured photographs of ex-votos and paintings or statues in the northwest of Italy believed to have miraculous powers.98 In a follow-up article on the subject, co-curator Jane Garnett refers to two of the comments made by exhibition-goers. One is quoted as having said, “It is outrageous. I thought that the Ashmolean Museum was about the promotion of art, not the promotion of superstition and bigotry” and, conversely, this was balanced with: “It is wonderful. It brings ordinary life into the Museum. The images sit on people’s hearts.”99 The dichotomy shows both the power and polemic of sacred objects which are taken out of churches, shrines, and temples and recontextualized in the public museum. Insuaste’s project was an act of resistance in that Catholic, Latin American, and Indigenous objects, imbued with the spirit of place, became invitations to a pilgrimage through touch and memory.

Conclusion The embodied experience that I described of processing down the transport bus like the aisle of a cathedral toward the dashboard altar of objects transformed me, as a viewer and beholder, into a pilgrim. It was one of the “experiences of unprecedented potency” that Turner writes about as encapsulating the experience of communitas. It was a place to recall, remember, and imagine,

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but, thinking of Elsner’s theory of pilgrimage objects also symbolizing hope for an imagined journey, it also became a space for me to reflect on my own anticipated pilgrimage to Montserrat, where I would soon be leading a group of students on Camino. The jar of water that Insuaste had collected the holy mountain seemed a sign. Insuaste can be seen as a pilgrim artist who walks, experiences, and then translates (pace Karst) or perhaps reinvents (pace Kaprow) her own memories from past to present by collecting objects from sacred sites and curating them into assemblages, all the while seeking to engender an experience of sacredness for the viewer. The Catholic, devotional context that undergirds some of the installations and assemblages allows for a fruitful dialogue with critical frameworks developed in the field of medieval studies since some of the theological roots of popular practices are shared. Insuaste’s cultural memory and history is embodied in the Indigenous Andean ritual objects and symbols, as well as Andean religious traditions, that are foundational to her artworks. As I have argued, artistic production which is truly interreligious can provide a nexus for understanding the intermingling of systems of belief.

Notes 1 S. Pollak, “At Bread and Puppet, a ‘Memorial Village’ Honors Departed Friends and Family,” Seven Days (July 10, 2019). 2 P. Schumann, “the WHY CHEAP ART? manifesto” (Glover, VT: Bread & Puppet Theatre, 1984). 3 “Cheap Art Comprehensive Vision Shops and Exhibits” in What is Cheap Art, Bread & Puppet, 1987. The St. Oscar Romero puppet was brought to Berkeley for the Religion & Resistance exhibition which ran from February 6, 2018 to May 24, 2018 at the Doug Adams Gallery at the Center for the Arts and Religion. 4 S. Hotchkiss, “Art’s Not Dead: 15 New Projects and Spaces in the Bay Area,” KQED Arts, November 18, 2014. Available online: https://www.kqed.org/arts/10145333/ arts-not-dead-15-new-projects-and-spaces-in-the-bay-area 5 Jennifer Stager in an interview with the author, June 16, 2019. 6 Gisela Insuaste, interview with author, January 14, 2019. 7 I am grateful to Yohana Junker for sharing these judicious comments on Insuaste’s work on an earlier draft of this chapter. 8 M. Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press), 94.

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9 Insuaste, portfolio website and blog: https://www.giselainsuaste.com/ (accessed August 2, 2019). 10 Insuaste, interview with author, August 27, 2019. 11 G. Insuaste, “Conversations: Gisela Insuaste,” interview with Alicia Ehni, NYFA Current, New York Foundation for the Arts, June 21, 2019. Available online: https:// current.nyfa.org/post/185751127248/conversations-gisela-insuaste 12 Insuaste, portfolio website and blog. 13 G. Simmel, “Bridge and Door” [1909], Theory, Culture & Society, 11/1 (1994), 6. 14 Insuaste in interview with author, January 14, 2019: When I first started with the painting, when I depicted the landscape, that’s also been my entryway into all of this, the landscape, with the mapping— within my own cultural background, thinking about the Incas or the Puruhá, the abstractions that you see in the textiles or in the artwork, that was part of my language already, or the colors I would bring into the paintings or installations, that was all part of my visual experience growing up. 15 E. Michelman, “Finding the Art in Dartmouth: Diverse Perspectives at Alumni Biennial,” Artscope (March/April 2015), 3. 16 Insuaste, correspondence with author, January 7, 2019. 17 Insuaste, interview with author, January 14, 2019. 18 Darrell Roberts, in correspondence with the author, September 17, 2019. 19 Insuaste, correspondence with author, January 7, 2019. 20 Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies, 95. 21 I am grateful to Amanda Kaminski for bringing Forché’s work to my attention, in particular C. Forché, “Reading the Living Archives: The Witness of Literary Art,” Poetry, 198/2 (2011), 159–74. 22 W. J. T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). See also David Morgan, p. 168. 23 Insuaste, interview with Weston Teruya for (Un)making, Art Practical Audio in November 2016, airdate January 20, 2017. Available online: https://soundcloud.com/ artpractical/sets/un-making-podcast 24 D. Morgan, Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 58. See also Morgan’s discussion of religious images as “embodied forms of communion with the divine,” The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), 55. 25 Darrell Roberts in a correspondence with the author, September 17, 2019. 26 Morgan, Images at Work, 12. 27 S. Coleman and J. Elsner, Pilgrimage: Past and Present in the World Religions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 6; see also Introduction, p. 7.

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28 V. Turner, Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), 128. 29 For a study of how the social teachings of the Latin American church shaped Pope Francis’s vision, before and during his pontificate, see R. Luciani, Pope Francis and the Theology of the People, tr. P. Berryman (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2018). 30 See Introduction, pp. 5–7. 31 V. Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 238–9; as Jerry Moore emphasizes in Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists (2nd edn., Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2004) “that one element of communitas is its existence outside of structured time—is, as far as I know, Turner’s unique insight,” (248), which is central to the theory of extratemporal communitas, posited here. It allows for communitas to be seen as penetrating beyond the pilgrim group to a feeling of the tangible presence of those who have visited a site in the past, and those who will come in the future. See Introduction and “communitas” in index. 32 Seneca Spurling, correspondence with author, September 18, 2019. 33 See p. 60 and M. Foster-Campbell, “Pilgrims’ Badges in Late Medieval Devotional Manuscripts,” in S. Blick and L. D. Gelfand (eds.), Push Me, Pull You: Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art (Leiden: Brill, 2011), Vol. I, 231. 34 For example, water from Lourdes used to make soap and cosmetics. Insuaste showed me a small souvenir from the Catholic pilgrimage site of Fatima, Portugal that consists of a terra-cotta block with soil from the shrine baked in and an image of SS Francisco and Jacinta Marto affixed to it. For additional historical context (such as a sixth-century box containing stones and dirt collected from sites in Jerusalem), see Chapter 1, pp. 31–32. 35 See Chapter 3 on the idea of rewilding, or freeing/making public pilgrimage song and chant. 36 Jennifer Stager, interview with author, June 16, 2019. 37 I Ching or Yi Ching is believed to be a divination manual and one of the three pre-Confucian Classics “built on the symbolisms of eight trigrams (each composed of broken and unbroken lines, standing respectively for yin and yang). These trigrams were later expanded to give sixty-four hexagrams. Confucius is supposed to have added commentary, called the Ten Wings, which gave philosophical depth to the work,” in J. Bowker (ed.) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Online edition: https://www. oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192800947.001.0001/acref9780192800947-e-3355?rskey=BMyt5X&result=3357 (accessed July 19, 2019). 38 P. Restany, “Re-Inventing and Re-Membering,” in A. Kaprow, 7 Environments (Milan: Fondazione Mudima, 1991), 8.

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39 J. Kelley, “Re-Membering,” in A. Kaprow, 7 Environments (Milan: Fondazione Mudima, 1991), 76. 40 Ibid., 81. 41 A. Kaprow, “Introduction to a Theory,” 7 Environments, 23. 42 Ibid., 25. 43 O. Pächt, Book Illumination in the Middle Ages: An Introduction (London: Harvey Miller, 1994), 10. 44 Kaprow, “Introduction to a Theory,” 25. 45 K. M. Rudy, “Sewing the Body of Christ: Eucharist Wafer Souvenirs Stitched into Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts, Primarily in the Netherlands,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, 8/1 (2016). 46 Insuaste, interview with author, January 14, 2019. 47 Jesus Christ Superstar (Universal Pictures, 1973), dir. Norman Jewison and co-written by Jewison and Melvyn Bragg based on the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. 48 Jennifer Stager, interview with author, June 16, 2019. 49 B. Niles, Casual Wanderings in Ecuador (London: John Long, 1923), 199. 50 There is a brief account of the Miracle of Baños available through the Directorio de Iglesias Católicas online and versions of the story on various sites geared at pilgrims and visitors. See also J. M. Vargas, Nuestra Señora Del Rosario en el Ecuador, Quito: Editora Royal, 1985; a pamphlet entitled “Novena a la Virgen Santísima del Rosario de Agua Santa de la Parroquia de Baños” is also available through the Marian Library Pamphlet Collection at the University of Dayton. There is a brief listing for Agua Santa de Baños in M. Walsh, Dictionary of Catholic Devotions (New York: Harper Collins, 1993): “a shrine in Ecuador where a statue of the Virgin Mary has been venerated since the early seventeenth century,” 16. 51 Insuaste, interview with author, January 14, 2019. 52 Yohana Junker, in private correspondence with author, August 2019. 53 See, for example, C. Damien, “Virgin of the Andes: Queen, Moon, and Earth Mother,” Southeastern College Art Conference Review, 14/4 (2004), 305 and passim. 54 For an itinerary and account of the pilgrimage, see H. Pham SJ and K. Barush, “From Swords to Shoes: Encountering Grace on the Camino Ignaciano,” Practical Matters Journal, 9 (2016). Available online: http://practicalmattersjournal.org/2016/06/28/ swords-to-shoes/ 55 G. Olsen, The Turn to Transcendence: The Role of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 147. 56 See also Chapter 2 for artwork which engages aspects of Bhakti theology in conjunction with Catholic Marian devotion. 57 A full literature review is outside the scope of this project, but a helpful starting point in terms of understanding the shape of the field is S. A. Rosenfeld and

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S. L. Bautista’s Rituals of the Past: Prehispanic and Colonial Case Studies in Andean Archaeology (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2017); on this particular point the authors cite H. G. Nutini, Todos los Santos in Rural Tlaxcala: A Syncretic, Expressive, and Symbolic Analysis of the Cult of the Dead (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988) and M. Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Pachacamac y el señor de los milagros: Una trayectoria milenaria (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1992), 3–4. Interview with Insuaste, January 14, 2019, edited for clarity. Roberts, correspondence with author, September 17, 2019. Insuaste, interview with Weston Teruya for (Un)making. Second Vatican Council, “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy: Sacrosanctum concilium,” December 4, 1963, Chapter 3 “The Other Sacraments and the Sacramentals,” 61. From a 2012 AiOP (Art in Odd Places) flier supplied to the author by Insuaste; the organization, founded/directed by Ed Woodham seeks to present “visual and performance art in unexpected public places.” The 2012 festival, of which walking talking seeing being was part, was guest lead curated by Edwin Ramoran, joined by guest curators Raquel de Anda, Christine Licata and Shaun J. Wright; curatorial coordinator, Lyra Monteiro; curatorial assistants, Claire H. Demere and John Wenrich, and produced by Sarah Brozna); the founder/director is Ed Woodham. For further information, see: http://www.artinoddplaces.org 2012 AIOP (Art in Odd Places) flier. Ch. VIII, “Shrines and Pilgrimages,” in Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacrament, The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines (Vatican City: Vatican, 2001), sec. 279. Insuaste, interview with Weston Teruya for (Un)making. The section cites Hebrews 9:11 and Apocalypse [Revelation] 21:3; see “Shrines and Pilgrimages” in the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, Principles and Guidelines, sec. 263. See Chapter 1, p. XX. Insuaste, interview with Weston Teruya for (Un)making. See, for example, D. Rock, The Church of Our Fathers, as Seen in St Osmund’s Rite for the Cathedral of Salisbury, with Dissertations on the Belief and Ritual in England Before and After the Coming of the Normans (London: Dolman, 1852), iii, 353–4, with n.19: sometimes [tombs of the saints] arose as tiny minster-like buildings, overshadowing the silver or the stone case which held the saints’ relics, and allowing, through a hole or window in the side, those who might like, to stretch forth their hands and gather the dust which lay upon the coffin lid.19 19 “constructa ibidem ecclesia beatissimi apostolorum principis Petri, in eandem sunt ejus ossa translata. In quo utroque loco ad indicium virtutis illius

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70 Roberts, in correspondence with the author, September 17, 2019. 71 Insuaste in correspondence with author, January 7, 2019. 72 I. Bolin, Inge, Rituals of Respect: The Secret of Survival in the High Peruvian Andes (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1998), 32. 73 I am using the term “more-than-human” intentionally in that it “refers to Andean ethnographies of [I]ndigenous cosmopolitics (rather than Actor Network Theory or posthumanism),” see S. A. Radcliffe, “Pachamama, Subaltern Geographies, and Decolonial Projects in Andean Ecuador,” in T. Jazeel and S. Legg (eds.), Subaltern Geographies (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2019), 137, n.2. 74 Ibid., 126. 75 Insuaste, interview with Weston Teruya for (Un)making. 76 Radcliffe, “Pachamama,” 131. 77 Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador, National Assembly, Legislative and Oversight Committee, Published in the Official Register October 20, 2008—see Chapter 7, “Rights of Nature” from art. 71 “Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes” to art. 74 “Persons, communities, peoples, and nations shall have the right to benefit from the environment and the natural wealth enabling them to enjoy the good way of living.” The document can be accessed online through the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Georgetown: http:// pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Ecuador/english08.html (accessed July 31, 2019). 78 Radcliffe, “Pachamama,” 131–2. 79 M. Gómez-Barris, The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 29. 80 Ibid., 36–7. 81 See n.73 on the intentional use of “more-than-human” earlier on. 82 Rosenfeld, Silvana and Stefanie L. Bautista, Rituals of the Past: Prehispanic and Colonial Case Studies in Andean Archaeology (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2017), 6. 83 Insuaste in a correspondence with author, July 16, 2019. 84 Insuaste, interview with author, January 14, 2019. 85 R. Turpo on “An Offering to the Pachamama,” translated from the original Spanish by Roger Valencia, Smithsonian Folklife Festival blog (June 8, 2015). Available online: https://festival.si.edu/blog/2015/an-offering-to-pachamama/

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86 Insuaste, interview with author, January 14, 2019. 87 Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo, in correspondence with author, October 2, 2019. 88 Insuaste, interview with the author, January 14, 2019. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 The video was available through Vimeo when I accessed it on August 16, 2019: https://vimeo.com/51951113 92 As I think back to the religious objects and elements embedded into the MTV videos I watched through the 1980s and 1990s, I realize that there is a bigger conversation here to be had, from the Danse Macabre imagery of the Grateful Dead’s hit “Touch of Grey” with its reanimated, guitar-strumming skeletons to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video. 93 The mission statement was accessed from the CAA website on August 2, 2019. In addition to the above, the CAA lists a number of other strategic initiatives including teaching praxis, inclusive education, publication of scholarship, criticism, and artists’ writings; it also “articulates and affirms the highest ethical standards in the conduct of the profession.” Available online: https://www.collegeart.org/about/ 94 The paper I gave was called “The Afterlife of Religious Relics and Souvenirs in Contemporary Art” and sought to engage the work of three women artists working in media including assemblage, film, and installation to show the continuity of the idea of a perceived transfer of efficacy from a sacred site/object to their relocation in a work of contemporary art—and how such ritual engagement is received by the religious and art communit(ies) today. 95 S. Nadalo, abstract from panel proposal accepted by CAA for inclusion in the 2019 Annual Meeting in New York City, co-chaired by Nadalo and Barush with invited panelists Laura Veneskey and Elizabeth Peña, moderated by Cynthia Hahn. 96 I brought Insuaste’s bus installation into dialogue with the handheld zines of Chiara Ambrosio (“As Far as the Eye Can Travel”), see “Conclusion” in this chapter. 97 Stager in personal correspondence with the author, June 16, 2019. 98 J. Garnett and G. Rosser, “Representing Spectacular Miracles,” Forum for Anthropology and Culture, 4 (2007). See also G. Fraser, “Forced to Kneel in a Public Art Gallery,” Church Times (December 2, 2005); and, for a full-length study on the recontextualization of sacred objects in the museum (including curatorial and visitor perspectives), see C. Paine, Religious Objects in Museums: Private Lives and Public Duties (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). For the catalogue, see M. Bagnoli, H. A. Klein, C. G. Mann, and J. Robinson (eds.), Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Walters Art Museum, 2010). 99 Garnett and Rosser, “Representing Spectacular Miracles,” 269.

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Los Altos → Everywhere “The End Is Where We Start From”

As the California drought has persisted, the once-verdant forests of Los Altos have been transformed into a more desert-like terrain.1 Pine needles cover the dusty earth and, at dusk in the late summer, tiny lizards dart across the pathways winding through a wooded thirty-six-acre property. The street that winds up the foothills is called Manresa Way—Camino Manresa, after the town in Spain where St. Ignatius of Loyola experienced mystical revelations and enlightenments in a cave near the River Cardoner for most of the year of 1522 while fasting, praying, and meditating on the gospels. Later, based on his experiences there, he would pen the Spiritual Exercises—a compendium for pilgrims desiring to deepen their faith. Back in Los Altos, at the top of Camino Manresa and tucked into a green hillside is a retreat center where pilgrims meditate and pray using these Ignatian tenets. If they follow the paths through the wood, they will eventually come upon a stone labyrinth situated in a clearing (Figure 5.1). At the center is a small and spindly olive tree, symbolic of a Jerusalem that is easy to imagine in the now very dry Northern California climate. It is a labyrinth I have walked many times, often as way to calm my mind and have a moment of quiet reflection during my institution’s weekend-long faculty retreats that take place there.2 A nearby plaque declares that labyrinths have long been used as miniature pilgrimages—a scaled-down walk to Jerusalem (Figure 5.2). My objective here is not to prove nor to dispute this point about the origin of the use of pavement and stone labyrinths as a mapped medial translation of a foot pilgrimage to Jerusalem or elsewhere.3 Rather, I will proceed on the basis that it is an idea that has become embedded in the cultural imagination at some stage along the way given the plaques like this one that I have seen at outdoor and church labyrinths all over the United States. This chapter builds on the idea that earthly pilgrimages are always reenactments of the soul’s navigation through the world toward a life beyond, and in this way 201

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Figure 5.1 Labyrinth at the Jesuit Retreat Center of Los Altos, with olive tree in center circle. Photo courtesy Tom Nann.

Figure 5.2 Plaque posted at the site of the Los Altos labyrinth. Photo courtesy Tom Nann.

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they encompass metaphor and reality as well as function as temporal reminders of a larger, cyclical pattern of life and resurrection. It presents a focused study of the recently commissioned outdoor labyrinth at the Jesuit Retreat Center of Los Altos—El Retiro San Iñigo, California—which is examined within the context of Ignatian spirituality and through the lens of the experiences of pilgrims, retreatants (both lay and ordained), and the designer/creator of the labyrinth itself who have described the experience of perambulating within the space as helping to facilitate a sense of the active presence of the divine.4 The focus on a particular outdoor labyrinth and a specific form of contemplative practice (with medieval origins but still very much used today) provides a specific lens of inquiry, but one that can be expanded to include other embodied meditative practices. The Ignatian focus also complements the work of Lauren Artress, Episcopal priest and Canon of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco from 1986 to 1992, who wrote a compendium on Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice (1995). I am using it here not as a secondary, historical, or critical resource but rather in its function as a personal reflection and guidebook. Artress replicated a medieval eleven-circuit labyrinth at Grace Cathedral, first on canvas and then permanently installed in 1994 (there is now a second labyrinth outside on the grounds, as well).5 There has been a great deal of work done recently on various aspects of the current labyrinth revival and the idea that “[w]alking the labyrinth is a body prayer.”6 As Artress contends, “To walk a sacred path is to discover our inner sacred space: that core of feeling that is waiting to have life breathed back into it through symbols, archetypal forms like the labyrinth, rituals, stories, and myths. Understanding the invisible world, the world of patterns and process, opens us up to the movement of the spirit.”7 By narrowing the lens to hone in on one contemplative tradition, certain ideas emerge which further substantiate the general thesis of this book—but the critical framework and approach can also be applied to other, interreligious contexts.

Labyrinthine forms through culture and time Many cultures have some version of a path that exists outside of, but is connected to, a sacred center that can be negotiated through embodied viewing or physically walking, and it would be compelling to examine a contemporary labyrinth (or labyrinth-like form) used by practitioners of multiple religions as a nexus for a dialogical approach to comparative religion. As one pilgrim reflected, “What is

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most precious to me is that the labyrinth is not attached (necessarily) to a religion but has a wider and more personal spiritual quality. It is not required that one know a certain prayer, have certain parents or be baptized—the only requirement is to put one foot in front of the other.”8 The richness of labyrinths as a node of dialogical encounter emerged at the Muilenberg-Koenig History of Religion Seminar at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in April of 2016, where the participants read a version of this chapter. A lively discussion emerged about parallel practices in other traditions that penetrated beyond form or format into ideas of ritual practices and beliefs. Purushottama Bilimoria, scholar of Indian philosophy and ethics at the Mira and Ajay Shingal Center for Dharma Studies in Berkeley, drew out some fascinating conjunctions between Buddhist sand mandalas and their relationship to the Potala Palace. He also discussed the tantric meditative visualization practices in the Dharma traditions. The Jain practice of erecting mandalas of the universe, often made of marble, that he described is perhaps the most similar in terms of both method and goals. The mandala is in the form of a person from torso to legs standing on a geometric representation of Mt. Meru “where the material universe is said to have begun”: One makes the journey in imaginative phases of meditation and espousing and imaginatively the dispersal of vows as one moves through the many worlds inhabited by all kinds of creatures with whom peace (pact of noninjury and show of empathy) has to be [affected]; many conversations take place and the soul is cleansed as well as expanded to encompass the bigger, higher world it experiences, leaving behind the old habits and desires and material clingings. The final stop is in the siddhalokas, the dwelling space of the enlightenment ones, where one longs to be and must one day through the longer pilgrimage of life end up at.9

Note the conjunction of the metaphor of the pilgrimage of life, geographic locus (Mt. Meru), and cosmological significance that leads to an ascent of the spirit and attention to the vibrant matter of the created universe. It is not a superficial comparison; as Bilimoria concluded, “the parallels are stunning and remarkable and I am left wondering if there is a universality in the mature spiritual practices and liminal communitas human beings strive to articulate and find their ways through more than the secular materialist world would acknowledge.” This substantiates the claim that such objects can generate rich interreligious dialogue through embodied encounter.

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Labyrinths themselves have an appeal that crosses cultures and time, and have been adopted by a diversity of religious communities for meditation and prayer walks and also installed in public gardens and hospitals. The design is compelling and the origins mysterious enough to fire the imagination. Purce has contended that: There are two approaches to the Divine, both spiral. One is an inward process of regeneration and integration, achieved with the aid of a mandala, and is a concentration into and through the centre; the other is the outward pilgrimage of Parsifal, Gilgamesh or Jason. The essential unity of the two is illustrated by the inward spiral of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress to the Celestial City. Of Dante’s climb to the summit of Mount Purgatory, and of Sudama’s journey to the Golden City of Krishna.10

There is something universal (or, as Artress has written, “archetypal”) about the form: “The labyrinth captures the mystical union between heaven and earth, an understanding of death and rebirth. It is a path of faith and doubt, the complexity of the brain, the turns of the intestine and birth canal, and the Celestial City.”11 Hermann Kern has written a history of the many potential origins of the form and meaning of the labyrinth across 5,000 years, including drawing out a potential link to cosmological symbolism and the movement of heavenly bodies, the relationship of the labyrinth to the form and function of the bodily womb, and as an embodiment of initiation rites with the walker leaving the space entering “a new phase or level of existence.”12 The recent proliferation of labyrinths could be, in part, due to “the awareness of the benefits of measured, ambulant meditations,” as Connolly has posited,13 the very activity of which is compatible with the teachings of a diversity of faith traditions ranging from Eastern religions to the beliefs of practitioners of an earth-based spirituality. Some painted Tibetan Buddhist mandalas on walls and thangkas, for example, are circular in shape and representative of an imagined universe that propels the mind toward enlightenment while facilitating healing. There is an implicit connection here to Situs Hierusalem (maps of Jerusalem) with their circularity and invitation to traverse the quadripartite design depicting an imagined holy land. Labyrinths also have a place in the Classical imagination through the myth of the Minotaur—the half-bull, half-human offspring of Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, who was trapped in a labyrinth-like space (probably more like a maze) built by Daedalus. The extant medieval pavement labyrinth at Chartres is cleared of chairs on occasion and many people of diverse faiths gather to walk together.

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Labyrinths also tend to be perceived as “thin places,” a phrase originating through Celtic traditions that is used to describe sacred spaces where the time and distance between this world and the next seems to dissolve. For me, a pilgrim with an admittedly terrible sense of direction, following the path of the labyrinth at Los Altos is a way to walk a relatively substantial distance without the anxiety of getting lost. I go alone or, more often, accompanied by my colleagues. Regardless of whether we are moving along at a quick clip needing to get to dinner or other events, or whether it is an (ostensibly) solitary journey as the sun sinks below the horizon, I always leave the place feeling that I have connected to something both within and beyond myself. Even on my more distracted walks, with rumbling stomach and a mind and heart unable to let go of various agenda items or discussions, I always find myself becoming aware of my body and the environment around me—the odd little plywood bat or bird house (I’ve seen both circling the sky above the labyrinth during my perambulations) set up high on a plinth, the soft rattle of the dry olive leaves in a warm exhalation of afternoon breeze, the chilly descent of fog in the evening as I and my companions draw our arms in and jackets closer. The memory of other winding labyrinth paths that I have negotiated in different places and at pivotal points in my life allow for reflections on past and future, as if an older version of myself has joined in communitas, crossing temporal boundaries through the augury of the ancient form. There were the miniature “finger labyrinths” mounted on the wall at the public, progressive high school I attended in Vermont, made by the students in a senior-year philosophy elective where I first learned what a “paradigm shift” is. There is the stone labyrinth in the little beach town of Bolinas at high summer where the hot sun cuts through the ocean wind—I have walked that one with three generations of my family. Then there is the time that I stood, feet planted slightly apart and hands clasped behind me, right in the very center of the Chartres Cathedral pavement labyrinth while heavily pregnant with my daughter. I was on the return journey from Santiago de Compostela as she somersaulted in utero on a journey of her own, leading me to contemplate the liminal stages and passages of life and their relationship to the mysterious medieval paths before me, in both the stones of the cathedral and then onward. My aching feet and body (carrying many extra pounds at that point) led my mind to reflect on whether these paths were interchangeable—would they lead to the same revelations? My experiences resonate with one of the pilgrims interviewed by Artress, who recalled, “[t]he labyrinth remains a memory which takes me back

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before my own recorded memory into a sacred past of deep connection to the holy.”14 The origins of labyrinths large enough to walk through (such as in the pavements of medieval cathedrals as in the instances of Chartres (Figure 5.3), Reims, and Amiens—or, alternatively the examples cut from turf) can probably be traced to the early thirteenth century, and it is likely that they played an important role in Catholic popular devotional practice as a “fully threedimensional stage for the performance of imagined pilgrimage.”15 As D. K. Connolly points out, the evidence for such practice lies in the extant walkable labyrinths themselves (e.g., the fact that they exist physically outside the scope of the page) and calls for more scholarly attention to uncovering the “labyrinth’s

Figure 5.3 Group walking the c. thirteenth-century pavement labyrinth at NotreDame des Chartres, Chartres, France. Photo courtesy Jeff Saward, Labyrinthos Photo Library.

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Figure 5.4 The Situs Hierusalem, c. ad 1100 in C. R. Beazley, The Dawn of Modern Geography: A History of Exploration and Geographical Science from the Close of the Ninth to the Middle of the Thirteenth Century (c. ad 900–1260), With Reproductions of the Principal Maps of the Time (London: John Murray, 1901).

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motives” by engaging with embodied experience at the site itself.16 There is also a connection between pavement labyrinths and contemporary medieval Situs Hierusalem (maps of Jerusalem), with their similar format of quadrants dividing a circular Jerusalem (Figure 5.4).17 Although this chapter focuses on the commissioning and use of labyrinths today, the plausible purpose of these largescale medieval pavement designs as so-called “virtual” pilgrimages has been firmly ingrained in the popular imagination and remain an important motivation for their commissioning and use.

The Ignatian imagination and the commissioning of labyrinths St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) discursively considered the crucial interplay between physical journey and contemplation in his Spiritual Exercises, a foundational text for the religious order he co-founded in the sixteenth century now known as the Society of Jesus. In the vision of Ignatius, the modern Jesuits seek to be in union with God in all things and to be “contemplatives in action,” laboring on behalf of global justice, peace, and dialogue.18 Labyrinths engender the notion of contemplation in action which is at the heart of Ignatian spirituality: the pilgrim travels to the center but the journey continues back outward and into the world in order to implement the spiritual tools they have gained in the form of revelations and discernment. The Spiritual Exercises engage with both physical and contemplative aspects of pilgrimage. Ignatius was trained to be a knight but sustained horrific injuries in a battle when he was in his early thirties. During his long convalescence he underwent a period of serious contemplation and discernment, which led to his conversion to a life in Christ.19 He was inspired, ultimately, to take to the road as a pilgrim, traveling first to the site of the Madonna of Montserrat and then, later, to Jerusalem.20 Ignatius was a walker and a seeker, referring to himself as a “pilgrim” fifty-five times throughout his “Autobiography.”21 Contemplation in action is one of the principles of Ignatian spirituality, leading to a sense of God’s active presence in the world. In the “First Explanation” of the Exercises, Ignatius elucidates the analogies of walking and contemplating: By the term Spiritual Exercises we mean every method of examination of conscience, meditation, contemplation, vocal or mental prayer, and other

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spiritual activities, such as will be mentioned later. For, just as taking a walk, traveling on foot, and running are physical exercises, so is the name of spiritual exercises given to any means of preparing and disposing our soul to rid itself of all disordered affections and then, after their removal, of seeking and finding God’s will by the ordering of our life for the salvation of our soul.22

A labyrinth walk engenders these ideas, “empower[ing] the seeker to move back out into the world, replenished and directed”; as Artress contends, “This is what makes the labyrinth a powerful tool of transformation. It helps mend the split between contemplation and action that has hindered spiritual work in the world.”23 It is not surprising that the Los Altos labyrinth walkers that I queried arrived independently at similar conclusions substantiating the claim that a circuitous path related to pilgrimage would map so neatly onto a spirituality based on being both actively in the world while at the same time retaining a contiguity with the divine. In order to penetrate the now-obfuscated roots of the labyrinth tradition, the focus here is limited to the role of labyrinths as an aspect of spiritual practice today—specifically within the Ignatian tradition. It is important to reiterate that the practice of building scaled-down versions of popular pilgrimage sites in domestic and also urban locales is not a new phenomenon in Catholic culture. As we have seen in the preceding chapters, such spaces are often articulated as replicas, or scaled-down versions of a site where a holy apparition appeared, where Jesus walked, or where relics are housed, are believed to retain a trace of the original and persist as places of healing, spiritual renewal, joy, and hope. There is also a relationship here, as there is in the case studies examined in previous chapters, to the idea of third-class relics in Catholic popular piety.24 Labyrinths perhaps fit into this tradition with their believed engenderment of a historical locale (Jerusalem) popularly believed to be mapped onto—in this case—a retreat center grounds. Andrew Greeley has written that the world of the Catholic is haunted by a sense that objects, events, and persons of daily life are revelations of Grace, and that the “the artist (musician, storyteller, poet) is a ‘sacrament maker,’ a person who calls out of his materials insights and images into the meaning that lurks beneath them.”25 Certainly, one of the tenets of Ignatian spirituality is finding God in all things—and the wooded Los Altos labyrinth walk with its invitation to perambulate around a central olive tree facilitates an attention to the land, to nature, and to God (e.g., the “Holy lurking in creation”), as we shall see in the commissioning reports and comments of retreatants, next.

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The commissioning of the Los Altos Labyrinth The winding wooded pathways of the Los Altos retreat center, studded here and there with a sanctuary, memorial, or Stations of the Cross markers, are very familiar to long-time retreatant Tom Nann. When the idea for the labyrinth began to form in late 2013, Nann had been traveling to Los Altos for prayer and meditation for over twenty-five years. Nann’s father, Raymond, had been participating in the annual Palm Sunday retreats at Los Altos for almost twentyfive years before that. In fact, Tom had been reluctant to accept his father’s invitations to join him, but in 1990 finally accepted. Raymond’s eightieth birthday was approaching, and Nann wanted to do something special for his father to honor the occasion. The idea for a labyrinth stemmed from Tom Nann’s familiarity with one at Christ the King Retreat Center in Sacramento, paired with the inspiration he found through Margaret Silf ’s book on Ignatian spirituality, Inner Compass (2013). Nann found a passage called “The Invitation” particularly compelling, in which Silf highlights the compatibility of Jesus’s notion of the Kingdom within to the philosophy of Empedocles: “God,” he said, “is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”26 The passage is illustrated with a diagram of concentric circles, in the center of which is written “I am” and through which a flower is rooted. The rings enclosing the central circle probe, “Who am I? How am I? Where am I?”—hence encouraging the pilgrim to penetrate further inward.27 Nann’s idea to construct a labyrinth on the grounds to encourage such prayerful reflection was enthusiastically received by Tom Powers, the director of the Los Altos Retreat Center, and the research and design work energetically commenced the following winter. Nann already had a location for the labyrinth in mind when he and Powers walked the grounds together. In a recent correspondence, he remembered the clearing with its “Charlie Brown Christmas tree.” Seeing beyond its diminutive stature and spindly branches, Nann revealed that the tree reminded him “of the bigger olive trees . . . that Christ knelt under during his most passionate, painful time in Gethsemane as he prayed for His Father to let his cup pass over him on Holy Thursday Eve / Good Friday Morn.”28 In this sense, the “medial shift” described by Wood can be seen to be enacted as the sites of the Holy Land and events of the life of Christ are imaginatively mapped onto the terrain of the California retreat center. The project began with some research into labyrinths through which Nann and Powers agreed on the size and design. It was important for Nann to have a

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central circle wide enough to give room to pilgrims for reflection and relaxation, so a nine-foot diameter was measured out, as well as calculations for the diameters of the rings and the width of the path itself. Rather than a mownlawn or hedge labyrinth, the dusty earth of Los Altos lent itself well to the use of a stone outline. Nann envisaged using four- to six-inch river rocks and obtained estimates from local quarries, which were paid for through his own grassroots fundraising efforts. Many friends and family members chipped in, knowing the project would be dedicated to Raymond on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. After the ground crew of the retreat center leveled out the clearing, Nann began the process of building, which in and of itself became a meditative and intentional activity. As the middle circle was laid out, he reflected on the “future people using the paths of this very labyrinth that would result in their entering of the centerpiece (or peace) where they hopefully would find what they feel God was speaking to them about.”29 Nann’s meditations also stretched into the deep past—a paradigm of extratemporal communitas-through-culture, in this case spurred by hefting the stones. As he labored, handling the stones, contemplating the Holy Land, and laying out the circles, he listened to a 1967 song by The Youngbloods: Some may come and some may go We will surely pass When the one that left us here Returns for us at last30

The lyrics led him to reflect on death, resurrection, and the choice to build on the Christian foundations of love through “knowing Christ and our faithful walk.”31 There were also a number of trials and tribulations. The stone was delivered to the very place he had marked out as the center of the labyrinth, so the enormous pile had to be moved twice. He also ran out of stone at one point, requiring a call to the quarry and additional financing. Nann recalls that he did not want volunteers to help him; he worked alone through the first day until sunset. After the second load of stone was delivered and he began to tire, he gratefully accepted help from volunteers. The laying out of the middle circle was a time of meditation and reflection for Nann, who found himself thinking about Ignatius’s notion of the “composition of place” through “entering” the Gospel stories:

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I always remember from many retreats at [Los Altos] that St. Ignatius talked about reading and reflecting on a gospel story and to “enter” that story as a participant. Seeing, feeling, smelling . . . all that is going on in the scene . . . One of the stories I reflected on was Christ’s agony in the garden—under the Olive trees. As I worked on the labyrinth’s center olive tree, I remember thinking of what it must have felt like for Him to know He was going to die a brutal death shortly. Another story I thought of was the parable of the seeds falling on various ground types. As I was laying the rock, I did see small weed growths which reminded me of that parable . . . I also reflected on the almost-stoning of [the woman] that Jesus stopped with His “let he without sin cast the first stone” challenge to the mob—probably since I was touching stones [and] rocks all day long[.] Did it feel like prayerful process? Absolutely, especially when I laid out the middle circle.32

This kind of imaginative reflection is a crucial aspect of the teachings of Ignatius, who wrote about the corporeal eye and the eye of the soul, expounded through his notion of the “composition of place” in the Spiritual Exercises.33 He encourages the individual retreatant to see through the gaze of the imagination the “physical place” of a scriptural scene wherein the topic that she wants to contemplate is situated. He teaches, “by ‘physical place’ I mean, for instance, a temple or a mountain where Jesus Christ or Our Lady happens to be, in accordance with the topic I desire to contemplate” [Spiritual Exercise 47].34 As Nann’s observations show, the very act of constructing the labyrinth facilitated a contemplative journey.

The compatibility of labyrinths with Ignatian spirituality Ignatius’s pilgrimages began through contemplative practice during a period of immobility and then evolved into the embodied experience of walking. When inside a labyrinth, the forward motion propels the body through space toward a central circle, around bends, outward, and inward hence reflecting Ignatius’s own meandering journey toward an imagined homeland and back into the world experiencing the active presence of God in both.35 He had once been a courtier preoccupied with tales of knights and ladies and vain desires for glory. A cannonball struck his legs, badly wounding him. During his painful convalescence in which his leg was periodically stretched, he read a book of the Life of Christ as well as hagiographies of saints including Dominic and

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Dominic and Francis. He began to prayerfully reflect on “how would it be, if I did this which St Francis did, and this which St Dominic did?”36 This paradigmatic imagining is central to pilgrimage practice, wherein the pilgrim often reflects and meditates on the life of Christ or the saints (as instruments of God). Walking in the Holy Land—or the scaled-down version in the form of the Los Altos labyrinth—can help facilitate this feeling of following in the footsteps of Christ both during and after the pilgrimage, as well as sensing the presence of God, who is, according to Ignatian tenets, active and present in this world as well as the next. During this period of bodily immobility, Ignatius longed to be where Jesus walked. He found consolation in thinking “about going to Jerusalem barefoot, and about not eating except herbs, and about doing all the other rigours he was seeing the saints had done, not only used he to be consoled while in such thoughts, but he would remain content and happy even after having left them aside.”37 Ignatius was not alone in this “exercise” of mental travel; the “permanence of the medieval monk was the ascetic state of pilgrimage.” For example, Bernard des Fontaines posited “contemplation as a ‘road,’ the royal highway on which the pilgrim advanced straight to his celestial country.”38 Ignatius’s own domestic sphere became a place of “pilgrimage in stability,” reflecting that of the mendicants (Francis and Dominic) whose lives he was contemplating.39 When Ignatius was well enough to travel on foot, he set out for the shrine of the Black Madonna of Montserrat, a famous center of miraculous cures and healings. In their discussion of pilgrimage as a liminoid phenomenon— that is, that it is voluntary and non-routine, and distinct from a “liminal” experience which is usually understood as tied to rite of passage within the structure of a set religious system—the Turners point to the transformative effect of approaching the final grotto or shrine, where sins are forgiven and the pilgrim identifies with “the symbolic representation of the founder’s experiences”—hence “ ‘put[ting] on Christ Jesus’ as a paradigmatic mask.”40 Ignatius symbolically (and literally) cast off his knightly attire and clothed himself as a pilgrim in sackcloth with a gourd to drink from. When he arrived at Montserrat he kept vigil all night and resolved to “clothe himself in the armour of Christ.”41 While there, Ignatius prayed and confessed for days—hence compatible with the Turners’ notion of the transformative effect of reconciliation during this phase of pilgrimage. However, for him the shrine of the Black Madonna was just one station in a much longer journey, again reflecting the plan of a labyrinth; he, like the Los Altos pilgrim, while still at the beginning stages of

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the spiritual life, intuited the center “peace” as mediated through the sacrament of penance. The motion of the pilgrim toward a central locus and then outward toward a periphery reflects Ignatian spirituality and especially the emphasis on “contemplation in action” and bringing the fruits of prayer into the world where the pilgrim is encouraged to be actively engaged. Beyond this, it mirrors Ignatius’s own experience as this and other hallmarks of Ignatian spirituality were developed. As though shunted back into the pathways that propel the labyrinth walker back outward toward the edge, Ignatius continued his journey, but it was not without difficulty. He found himself ensnared by “scruples,” or ruminations where his sins seemed magnified, and began to take over his thoughts. Later, when praying the office to Our Lady on the steps of a monastery, he again approached a sacred center (analogous to Jerusalem or the interior circle of the labyrinth) when he had a vision of the Holy Trinity and was overcome with emotion.42 These high points were interspersed with other moments of frustration. Ignatius proceeded to a cave in Manresa, facing the River Cardoner and Montserrat (we remember that the Los Altos labyrinth lies at the end of Manresa Way). It was during this time where he gained insight into the depth of things through “mystical illuminations.” Like the labyrinth, these loci, or central moments, did not mark the ends of his journey, but rather partway points or stations; he would subsequently continue along his path of spiritual seeking through contemplation and conversation. Eventually, he would make a great pilgrimage to Jerusalem before returning to Spain and later traveling to Paris for further theological training. It was in a small chapel at Montmartre in Paris where he would gather together like-minded friends to make religious vows in 1534; the group pledged to embark on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem together, but this was not to come to fruition. Rethinking their plan, they decided to form a religious community and, in 1540, gained papal recognition as the Compañía de Jesús, also known as the Society of Jesus, in Rome. Ignatius’s formative pilgrimage to Jerusalem was key to his practice of the “composition of place” as it established a memory of the places where Jesus lived and taught.43 His objective was to use his own experiences to help others form an imaginative vision of the Gospels, whether they could physically travel to Jerusalem or not (like his early companions). Ignatius was not able to return to Jerusalem later in his life, so he compensated for this by giving pilgrims an opportunity to engage in pilgrimage in place. He instructs them to contemplate the life of Christ through the second week of the Exercises, which is compatible

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with the experiences of the pilgrims in the labyrinth at Los Altos.44 As Nann discovered when building the labyrinth, the stones and the olive trees led him, too, toward a composition of place.45 In this case, a perceived transfer of spirit works through the levels starting with the events in the life of Christ to Ignatius’s contemplations, his own foot pilgrimages, his penning the Exercises, and the physical labyrinths installed at retreat centers. The function of such centers is to allow retreatants to have the time, space, and quiet needed to enable the paradigmatic shift required to “put on Christ Jesus,” and the labyrinth seems to facilitate such experiences. In addition, it mirrors the Jesuit call to “go out into the world”; the labyrinth walker must proceed from the center and back out again—the pilgrimage does not end within the central circle.

Pilgrim experiences: faith embodied The Spiritual Exercises themselves can be said to reflect Ignatius’ autobiography, and the form of the labyrinth (appropriately so, given its popularity at Ignatian universities and retreat centers) profitably recalls both. Various Jesuit organizations also offer opportunities for “Retreats in Daily Life,” which is a longer (eight month) program of prayer, meetings with a spiritual director, and pattern of scripture reading, contemplation, and meditation.46 These are sometimes called “Nineteenth Annotation Retreats,” the name of which refers to Ignatius’s acknowledgment that those ‘involved in public affairs or pressing occupations’ may still desire to make the Exercises. The annotation asks directors to adapt the exercises to meet people where they are in terms of time and circumstances. Los Altos offers retreats of varying lengths from ‘Nineteenth [Annotation]’ to the duration of a weekend to the full thirty-day Exercises. In a survey left at Los Altos and distributed to the students, staff, and faculty of the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, CA sixteen of seventeen respondents replied ‘yes’ when asked whether they ‘find the labyrinth a good complement to Ignatian spirituality.’47 Five respondents specifically mentioned that the labyrinth helped them in making the Examen, or ‘Method for Making The General Examination of Conscience,’ that Ignatius sets forth at the beginning of the Exercises in five points: The First Point is to give thanks to God our Lord for the benefits I have received from him. The Second is to ask grace to know my sins and rid myself of them. The Third is to ask an account of my soul from the hour of rising to the present

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examen, hour by hour or period by period; first as to thoughts, then words, then deeds, in the same order as was given for the particular examination. The Fourth is to ask pardon of God our Lord for my faults. The Fifth is to resolve, with [God’s] grace, to amend them. Close with an Our Father.48

Self-examination, using iterations of the model above, is employed by retreat directors in order to find deeper peace, strengthen their relationship with God, and recover or find greater order in their lives.49 The survey respondents discovered the labyrinth in various ways; some were told about it and others found it in the clearing on silent or prayerful solitary walks. Another pilgrim was informed about the labyrinth by his retreat director and decided to seek it out again during a time of quiet reflection, and ultimately compared it to the Examen: In particular I think [the labyrinth walk complements] the Examen—its method of thoughtfully replaying the events of one’s day or life and noticing the grace present, the struggle present, the turn to or away from love. The labyrinth in its physicality, both in its actual winding structure and in the steady movement of your body through it, parallels the Examen, actually complementing it and aiding in one’s ability to prayerfully move through these events and to potentially discern God’s voice in them.50

This pilgrim’s experience not only reflects the purpose of the Examen through a lens of Ignatian spirituality (note the emphasis on thoughtfully revisiting the events of the day) but also Nann’s intentions in constructing the labyrinth. The pilgrim describes the winding motion to and away from the center as a “turning to or away from love” and implicitly as a way to alleviate the present struggles and find grace. This is compatible with the idea of the “center peace” (rather than centerpiece)—as Nann had initially conceived the walk in its context. Other pilgrims mentioned that the labyrinth stimulated their contemplative imaginations and they felt as though they were in the presence of the divine; one pilgrim mentioned, in particular, the feeling of “God’s omnipresence and desire to connect with us.”51 This, in its very essence, fits the notion of the “composition of place” that is so important to Ignatian spirituality, described by Nicolas Standaert as not an event (for example, a miracle account in the Gospels) but “in the person of Jesus Christ . . . present in a fixed geographical and temporal context.”52 One pilgrim used the language of “picturing,” as in making present an image in the mind’s eye as his body negotiated the space: “I picture God as the

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center,” he wrote, “and me journeying towards [God].”53 Another pilgrim described her experience as follows: While walking the labyrinth I had a beautiful contemplation of Jesus. The space was incredibly conducive to prayer and contemplation. It was quiet, peaceful, and the pattern of walking made it easy to focus on prayer. I truly feel that Jesus was walking the labyrinth with me.54

Note that this pilgrim dwells for a moment on the place itself—the quietness, the peaceful environment, the act of walking as a way to incite the mind into a contemplative state, all of which allowed a sense of divine presence to emerge. It is important to note that many of the comments focused specifically on the embodied experience of a labyrinth—the moving in and outward toward a center imagined to represent a place of peace and unburdening. As Connolly has pointed out in regard to the historic Chartres labyrinth, “choice is absent and a calmness settles in; one’s will is given over to the path.”55 While the idea of walking with Jesus can be applied to religious pilgrimage experiences more generally (one Jesuit respondent pointed to the fact that labyrinths exemplify a “form of active prayer” and “contemplat[ion] in action”)56 some of the survey comments dwelled on the geographically contained, winding and circuitous nature of the labyrinth walk. Several comments highlighted the fact that it is impossible to get lost as the path itself guides the footsteps (quite unlike a longer walking pilgrimage where there can often be a hint of anxiety when there has not been a waymark on the path for a while or when a hostel for the night has not yet been sorted out). One pilgrim said, “it is a great way to ‘actively slow down.’ What I liked the most is the opportunity to let go, be guided by the convoluted path.”57 Another elaborated on this point still further: Walking in the labyrinth slowly, one step at a time, was really meditative. I didn’t have to make choices where to go but just had to follow with trust and ease. It freed my mind from unnecessary thoughts and let praise and thanksgiving to God be the pace of my footsteps . . . I asked God to continue to guide my steps like this back in daily life.58

This pilgrim’s account differed from many of the others in that she was walking the labyrinth together with her husband. When they would meet each other as the paths wound in and outward, they would make eye contact and she would silently express gratitude as part of her prayer; again, the “crossing of paths” over and over being an experience unique to a labyrinth walk.

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Another pilgrim posited that the walk could be used as a timer, akin to rosary beads where each curve of the path might signal a “particular scene from scripture” and the center could be a place to pause to “finish contemplation or engag[e] in a colloquy.”59 As we saw in Chapter 1, Volker conceived of the backyard Camino as a sort of rosary walk, punctuated with birdfeeders marking out places where the pilgrim can pause to say the Lord’s Prayer. While rosaries themselves are often used on pilgrimages and in processions at sacred sites, a labyrinth similarly releases the mind in the same way as repetitive chanting in community. For him, this was achieved by the compulsory “steady movement” as the path directed his steps. The survey results presented here complement and contribute to the burgeoning scholarship on pilgrimages in the forms of manuscripts, maps, and labyrinths in the Middle Ages. A marked thinness of extant written contemporary sources has led to conjecture about how these walks facilitated prayer and reflection and the particulars of how they were used. They provide additional insight by looking at how the space at Los Altos was negotiated and imagined, what the center was believed to represent, and unambiguous descriptions of spiritual experiences that occurred within this very particular built environment.

Labyrinths at other Ignatian retreat centers and universities: Boston College and Manresa Jesuit Centre for Spirituality, Dublin Los Altos is one of several Jesuit retreat centers and universities that have incorporated a labyrinth into their grounds, completely independent of one another, which further strengthens the argument that they can function as an excellent adjunct to the Spiritual Exercises. Marina McCoy, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, recently wrote about her experiences walking an unnamed labyrinth: Standing in the center of the labyrinth, I laid down a heart-shaped stone among the many other objects that people had left there—pinecones, pieces of broken glass, a small crucifix—and knew deeply the interconnection between God and self and other, the sense that “in [God] we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).60

The anagogic sense of closeness with the divine corresponds with the comments left by pilgrims of the Los Altos labyrinth. Leaving behind a material

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object, either as an ex-voto in thanksgiving or as, alternatively, representative of a burden—a thing keeping the pilgrim from God, is a traditional aspect of pilgrimage practice. Indeed, Ignatius himself left behind his sword at the feet of Our Lady of Montserrat as a symbolic gesture of leaving behind his vainglory and indeed his life as Inigo the Courtier. Just as Inigo became Ignatius, McCoy recounts that God compelled her to name herself on the way out of the labyrinth. With each step, the names seemed to emerge: mother, teacher, wife, friend, blossoming flower, patient, impatient, free, unfree—and, ultimately, the “name that surrounded all of these other names: Beloved.”61 Although McCoy does not name the specific labyrinth she was walking, there is, in fact, a copy of the unicursal Chartres labyrinth installed near the Burns Library on the Boston College campus and dedicated to alumni who lost their lives in the September 11 tragedy, whose names are inscribed on the encircling lining (Figure 5.5). The website ventures some ideas of the historic symbolism of the Chartres labyrinth as well as the intended use of the Boston College version: The path through the labyrinth constitutes the longest possible way to arrive at the center. It is important not to hurry the experience, but to submit to its

Figure 5.5 Boston College Memorial Labyrinth, Boston, MA. Photo courtesy Boston College.

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structure and discipline . . . This path is an opportunity for meditation. Walk its circuitous route mindfully. It is a symbol of the universe, God’s masterpiece.62

The prescribed experience here is less ambiguous, perhaps, than the Los Altos labyrinth, which is appended by a simple plaque in a forested area. However, the experience of being guided remains the same. In his address at the dedication of the site, the president of Boston College, University President William P. Leahy, SJ highlighted the contained nature of the path and its symbolic import: May its presence on the Boston College campus call us to understand that even in darkness, there is a path on which we can walk. Even in confusion there is grace to guide our journey. And even when we seem to stand most distant from where we began, we can turn yet again toward home, moving according to the sure compass of God’s enduring love.63

Again, the comments are unambiguously geared toward the experience of walking a labyrinth as opposed to other types of pilgrimages; the set, circumscribed path is compared to God showing the way forward; there is some confusion and disorientation in the sharp turns, but ultimately the center is imagined as “home”; as a place of God’s love, consistent with Nann’s intention

Figure 5.6 Turf labyrinth at Manresa Jesuit Centre of Spirituality, Dublin, Ireland. Photo courtesy Piaras Jackson, SJ.

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for the Los Altos labyrinth and the Medieval imagining of the center as representative of the civitas Dei. A notable example outside the USA is the turf labyrinth at the Manresa Jesuit Centre of Spirituality in Dublin, Ireland (Figure 5.6).64 The turf model was employed as it was the most appropriate to the UNESCO biosphere reserve on which the retreat center is situated; the director, Piaras Jackson, SJ notes that the “setting and composition . . . have often been noted: the meadow is a gesture to sustainable gardening and supports a diversity of fauna—insects, and birdlife,” and rightly calls it a “generously-scaled landscape art inviting interaction.”65 He notes that the labyrinth has been in almost constant use by retreatants including a Jesuit Tertian who walked the labyrinth every day while he made the thirty-day Spiritual Exercises. Strengthening the Ignatian connection, perhaps, a workshop held in October of 2013 highlighted the relationship of the labyrinth to the teachings of the saint, with promotional materials offering the following gloss: Just as it inspired Ignatius, the desire to go on pilgrimage has led many Christians to embrace the ancient practice of walking labyrinths.66

The statement resonates with Jackson’s initiatives to appeal to the “religious sense of ordinary people.”67 He highlights the relationship of the design of the labyrinth to the tracery of Celtic art and sculpture, pointing to the popular proverb that “God writes straight with crooked lines.”68 All of this works toward, as Jackson posits, developing a “trust in the individual journey rather than placing the emphasis on learned content and expert guides” as well as by encouraging the contemplation of specifically Ignatian lines of inquiry, including the following questions: Here is the path, can you trust yourself to follow it? And trust those who laid it? Can you recognize and articulate what hopes it prompts in you, what apprehensions it reveals, what feelings are stirring? Can you hold in tension the fact that you walk alone yet are invited to share much in common with all others who value what is important to you? What might “progress” best mean for you?69

Although these questions could be posed to any pilgrim walking a route to just about any shrine, the design and metaphorical significance of the labyrinth shapes how they are answered; “progress” becomes a complex problem as the path winds first toward and then away from the center in a space that transcends temporalities with its medial connection to an imagined civitas Dei.

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Conclusion Pilgrimage practice is not only compatible with Ignatian spirituality but has been shaped by it. St. Ignatius of Loyola embarked on a transformative journey on foot and employed the metaphor and reality of this experience in the practical guidebook he authored so others could walk in his footsteps. Beyond this, the shape of a labyrinth with its geographic and spatial containment, vantage point, and curated movement of the body in and then out of a center spatially maps his interior journey and encourages others to reflect on this while they are partaking in the Spiritual Exercises, facilitating an anagogic experience where temporalities seem to collapse. In the case of the Los Altos labyrinth, a medial transfer occurs from ancient sacred places to the form of a built environment in which they are engendered—the spirit of the landscape of Jerusalem where Jesus walked (and where Ignatius would follow) is transferred to the emblematic little olive tree in the central circle; the contemplative journey that took place in the cave in Manresa is transferred to the circuitous path—a pilgrimage within a pilgrimage within a pilgrimage at the end of the Camino Manresa, winding deep into a forest in California and back outward toward “home.”

Notes 1 A version of this chapter appears in C. Ocker and S. Elm (eds.), Material Christianity: Western Religion and the Agency of Things (Cham: Springer, 2020). I am grateful to the participants of the Muilenberg-Koenig seminar (April 2016) and JST faculty colloquium where I presented earlier versions of this material; to Bruce Lescher, Hung Pham, SJ, Anh Tran, SJ, and Kevin Burke, SJ for their judicious and helpful comments on earlier drafts; and to Tom Powers, director of El Retiro San Iñigo, and Tom Nann for their helpful feedback and generosity in sharing information about the labyrinth commissioning and installation process. 2 As Lauren Artress has written in her book on labyrinths as a spiritual practice, discussed on p. 203, “The labyrinth can be a tremendous help in quieting the mind, because the body is moving. Movement takes away the excess charge of psychic energy that disturbs our efforts to quiet our thought processes,” L. Artress, Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice (New York: Riverhead, 2006), 25. 3 Penelope Reed Doob is among those who vehemently contest this theory but lists a number of publications that support it including J. B. F. Gerusez, Description historique et statistique de la ville de Reims, vol. 1 (Reims, 1817), D. W. Robertson, A

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Preface to Chaucer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), Donald R. Howard, The Idea of the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976); see Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity Through the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 120 n.34. Others not in Doob’s list include Helmut Jaskolski, who writes, “If the pilgrim’s journey is the realistic symbol of the earthly pilgrimage of the Christian to his final home in the glory of the heavenly Jerusalem, then the Church labyrinth is a further reflection of this complex meaning in the medium of art and ritual,” in The Labyrinth: Symbol of Fear, Rebirth, and Liberation (Boston, MA: Shambhala Press, 1997), 75, and Artress, who writes that in response to travel becoming dangerous and costly, “the Roman church appointed seven pilgrimage cathedrals to become the ‘Jerusalem’ for pilgrims. The walk into the labyrinth in many of these cathedrals marked the ritual ending of the physical journey across the countryside. It served as a symbolic entry into the realms of the Celestial City,” Walking a Sacred Path, 32. Finally, from a historical perspective, Daniel K. Connolly argues for the labyrinth as an alternative journey for those who could not travel to Jerusalem due to political turmoil in “At the Center of the World: The Labyrinth Pavement of Chartres Cathedral,” in S. Blick and R. Tekippe (eds.), Art and Architecture of Late Medieval Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and the British Isles (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 286 and passim. Herein, I have relied on Connolly’s essay and also dissertation to further buttress the idea of the perceived transfer of “spirit” through mapping projects and its potential origin in much earlier medieval (and Catholic) culture although the focus remains on the present day. There are also fertile parallels to the Orthodox tradition of creating and viewing icons. In a way, a pilgrimage path (or in this case, a labyrinth) can function as an icon, or doorway through which God can be met through spiritual ascent; likewise, icon painting itself can be thought of as a form of mental pilgrimage, inclusive of periods of prayer and fasting. In the icon tradition, it is the brush (or the eye), not the feet, that traverses the mystical forms and leads to a closeness with God. I am grateful for a fruitful conversation with Kevin Burke, SJ on some of the compelling analogies between icon painting and the backyard Camino discussed in Chapter 1. Artress founded the Veriditas Project in 1995 which is “dedicated to inspiring personal and planetary change and renewal through the labyrinth experience. We accomplish our mission by training and supporting labyrinth facilitators around the world, and offering meaningful events that promote further understanding of the labyrinth as a tool for personal and community transformation.” See: https://www. veriditas.org/ Artress, Walking a Sacred Path, 141. Ibid., 15.

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8 Reflection from a pilgrim who had completed a labyrinth as quoted ibid., 129. 9 Purushottama Bilimoria’s response to author’s paper as presented at the MuilenbergKoenig Seminar in the History of Religion at the San Francisco Theological Seminary, April 2016, quoted here with kind permission. 10 Purce, Mystic Spiral, in Artress, Walking a Sacred Path, 23. 11 Artress, Walking a Sacred Path, 96. 12 H. Kern, Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meaning Over 5,000 Years, ed. R. Ferré and J. Saward (London: Prestel, 2000), 30–3. 13 Connolly, “At the Center of the World,” 285–6. 14 Artress, Walking a Sacred Path, 109. 15 D. K. Connolly, “Imagined Pilgrimages in Gothic Art: Maps, Manuscripts, and Labyrinths” (PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 1998), 235–6. 16 “Movement through the labyrinth at Chartres creates many of the conditions which I have discussed in relation to the itineraries as predicative of imagined pilgrimage. The most important of these conditions is the dissolution of present circumstances and the projection of one’s body into the spaces of a design that is understood to be oriented towards Jerusalem,” ibid., 240–1 and n.37. 17 Connolly “At the Center of the World,” 293–6. 18 See, for example, “About Us,” https://www.jesuits.org/about-us/the-jesuits/ (accessed October 28, 2020) and the mission “to work for reconciliation every day—with God, with human beings, and with the environment.” Available online: https://www. jesuits.org/about-us/mission-and-ministries/ 19 Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings: Reminiscences, Spiritual Diary, Select Letters Including the text of The Spiritual Exercises, tr. J. A. Munitiz and P. Endean (London: Penguin, 1996), 13–17. 20 I am grateful to my colleague at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, Hung Pham, SJ, for inviting me to collaborate with him in teaching a graduate course he had designed on Ignatian Spirituality, Camino Ignaciano, which culminated in a pilgrimage from Loyola, Spain to Rome, Italy in the summer of 2015. 21 See I. Echarte (ed.), An Ignatian Concordance (Bilbao: Ediciones Mensajero, 1996), 946–7. Note that the word “pilgrim” (in Spanish or Italian) appears eighty-three times in the “Autobiography,” but some instances are in the plural and do not necessarily refer to Ignatius himself (as explored in a paper delivered at the October 2016 College of William & Mary Annual Consortium for Pilgrimage Studies by André Brouillette, SJ entitled “The Concept of Pilgrim as Key to Self-Identity in Ignatius Loyola’s Autobiography”). 22 Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: A Translation and Commentary, tr. G. E. Ganss, SJ (Saint Louis, MO: Loyola Press, 1992), 21. 23 Artress, Walking a Sacred Path, 31

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24 See pp. 31–32, 74–75. 25 A. M. Greeley, American Catholics Since the Council: An Unauthorized Report (Chicago: Thomas More Press, 1985). 26 M. Silf, “The Invitation,” Inner Compass: An Invitation to Ignatian Spirituality (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2003), 3. 27 Ibid., 3. 28 Tom Nann, in a correspondence with the author, January 19, 2016. 29 Nann, in a correspondence with the author, March 3, 2016. 30 From “(Let’s) Get Together,” words & music by Chet Powers © Copyright 2001 Sfo Music Inc., EMI Tunes Ltd. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by permission of Hal Leonard Europe Limited. 31 Nann, in a correspondence with the author, March 3, 2016. 32 Ibid. 33 K. Barush and H. Pham, SJ, “From Swords to Shoes: Pedagogy in Real-Time Pilgrimage Along the Camino Ignaciano,” paper delivered at the annual Symposium for Pilgrimage Studies, College of William and Mary, October 2015. 34 Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, 40. 35 D. L. Fleming, SJ, What is Ignatian Spirituality? (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2008), 32. 36 Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings, 15. 37 Ibid. 38 M. O’R. Boyle, Divine Domesticity: Augustine of Thagaste to Teresa of Avila (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 71–2. 39 Ibid., 71. 40 V. Turner and E. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 11. As Deborah Ross has stated in her Introduction to Image and Pilgrimage, “[a]s modern pilgrimage in complex postindustrial societies is voluntary, [the Turners] described it as a ‘liminoid’ experience, rather than a liminal one in the rite-of-passage sense,” xxxi. 41 Ignatius of Loyola, “Reminiscences (Autobiography),” in Personal Writings, 20. 42 Ibid., 25. 43 K. F. Burke SJ, and E. Burke-Sullivan, The Ignatian Tradition (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), xxviii, xxix: “The use of these mental faculties was important to Ignatius. They are the personal doorways through which God’s Spirit works on the consciousness and affectations of the individual disciple.” 44 I am grateful to Hung Pham, SJ, for conversations that helped me to elucidate this point. 45 See, for example, Fleming, What is Ignatian Spirituality?, 55–9. 46 See, for example, ‘19th Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises’, Boston College Center for Ignatian Spirituality, https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/offices/mission-ministry/sites/ center-for-ignatian-spirituality/ prayer/19th-annotation.html (accessed 10/28/20).

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47 From a voluntary survey left at the reception desk at the Los Altos retreat center and distributed to students, faculty, and staff at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, Berkeley in February, 2016. The questions were: 1) How did you come across the labyrinth; 2) Describe your experience walking the labyrinth. Did you find it conducive to prayer and contemplation? 3) Have you been on other pilgrimages? How did the labyrinth walk compare? 4) Do you find the labyrinth a good complement to Ignatian Spirituality? Explain. 5) Have you walked a labyrinth at another Jesuit retreat center (e.g. Manresa in Dublin), and, if so, where? Describe your experience (hereafter ‘Labyrinth Survey’). 48 Ignatius of Loyola, in Ganss (trans.), The Spiritual Exercises, 38. 49 Tetlow, Joseph A., ‘The Examen of Particulars,’ in Sharing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, ed. David L. Fleming, SJ (Jesuits of the Missouri Province, St Louis, 2008), 70 50 Andrew, Oakland, CA (Labyrinth Survey). 51 Hanrita, Berkeley, CA (Labyrinth Survey). 52 N. Standaert, “The Composition of Place: Creating Space for an Encounter,” The Way, 46/1 (2007), 7–20. 53 Maricil, San Ramon, CA (Labyrinth Survey). 54 Elaina, Berkeley, CA (Labyrinth Survey). 55 Connolly, “Imagined Pilgrimages in Gothic Art,” 242. 56 Dzao, Culver City, CA (Labyrinth Survey). 57 Jean, Cupertino, CA (Labyrinth Survey). 58 Agnes, Cupertino, CA (Labyrinth Survey). 59 Jacob, Berkeley, CA (Labyrinth Survey). 60 M. B. McCoy, “Walking the Labyrinth,” The Ignatian Spirituality Blog (a subsidiary of Loyola Press), accessed March 2, 2016: http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/22829/ walking-the-labyrinth#sthash.yLXtEU12.dpuf 61 Ibid. 62 “Memorial Labyrinth,” Boston College Website. Available online: https://www. bc.edu/bc-web/sites/memorial-labyrinth.html (accessed March 1, 2016). 63 Remarks of Boston College President William P. Leahy, SJ at the dedication ceremony of the Memorial Labyrinth, September 11, 2003. Available online: https:// www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/sites/memorial-labyrinth/dedication-ceremony.html (accessed March 1, 2016). 64 I am grateful to Paul Janowiak, SJ for bringing this labyrinth to my attention and to Piaras Jackson, SJ, Director, Manresa Jesuit Centre of Spirituality, Dublin for sharing helpful information on the commissioning, building, and use of the labyrinth as well as photos and various reference resources used toward designing the space. 65 Piaras Jackson SJ, Director, Manresa Jesuit Centre of Spirituality, Dublin, in email to author, February 29, 2016.

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66 From the promotional materials for “Walking Life’s Labyrinth” presentation at the Manresa Jesuit Centre of Spirituality, Dublin, October 12, 2013. 67 Jackson, in email to author, February 29, 2016. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid.

Toward a Conclusion: “As Far as the Eye Can Travel”

In navigating the spaces of this book, it became clear that there could easily be a second, third, fourth volume continuing to engage various religious and historical contexts out of which reinvented, reconstructed, or “translated” pilgrimages are created. One of the impactful themes that has emerged is the possibility of embodied experience through image and environment vis-à-vis a perceived transfer of spirit from site to site. This is based on medieval notions of viewing, visual tactility (what I have called the pilgrimage of the eye), and popular devotional practice such as creating contact relics, all of which have persisted in one form or another in the case studies examined here. The projects which have garnered public attention like the British Pilgrimage Trust’s efforts to revive both pilgrimages and the songs that are linked to them (Chapter 3) and the backyard Camino created by Volker (and the film based on his project, Chapter 1) have captured the public imagination. We are entering a moment of a more positive reception of, and curiosity toward, religious art in the academy, as evinced by the current state of the field (Chapter 4). A triangulation of art, spirituality, and health-related sciences can greatly benefit mental and physical wellness, and a continued openness from the field is integral to facilitating such research. To that end, this research supports recent scientific studies that have shown that various aspects of pilgrimage (including walking, viewing, and singing) can support and facilitate healing, healthfulness, and pain management.1 Ruth Stanley, who has extensive experience in her roles as a holistic clinician as well as a spiritual director, has shown that vocal chanting and music of the sort being revived by the efforts of the British Pilgrimage Trust can facilitate healing in chronic illness by restoring the function of the autonomic nervous system. These contributions (along with Purce’s comprehensive work on the “healing voice”) are looked at through the lens of the theory of extratemporal communitas (Chapter 3).2 Other physiological benefits of pilgrimage are being 229

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explored by M. Brennan Harris of the Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences at the College of William and Mary.3 It is significant that Harris’s pilot study focused on pilgrimage in particular, specifically a “young and healthy group of subjects” who had made a voluntary journey along the Camino de Santiago. Even those who were not walking for religious reasons would have encountered others who were, and the origin of the path is rooted in religious tradition through its connection to St. James of Compostela. I would also venture to take this step further and assert that embodied viewing experiences can also have positive impacts on health and wellness. Already, research has shown that “religious belief might provide a framework that allows individuals to engage known pain-regulatory brain processes,” which formed the conclusion of a study published in 2009. Katja Wiech from the Department of Clinical Neurology at the University of Oxford and a team of researchers from a diversity of fields including theology, ethics, and medicine used functional magnetic resonance imaging and behavioral data to show that subjects contemplating religious images could detach themselves from an experience of pain.4 David Zucker of the Swedish Cancer Institute in Seattle (and Volker’s recovery oncologist), discusses the idea of “boundary experiences” in Phil’s Camino, which “[shift] the individual from the everyday mode into a more authentic mode.” Although confrontation with death through chronic illness is “by far the most potent” of these boundary experiences, Turner and Turner show that communitas can also be a means through which to achieve a perspectival shift.5 I contend that the art and built environments explored here are capable of engendering such experiences through the connection they feel to others (ancestors, saints, God), as well as the perceived presence of the past, as discussed throughout this book. Many of the interviewees who have experienced the artworks and built environments express that they, too, have undergone significant changes and spiritual formation through the processes of viewing, walking, experiencing. Labyrinths and “portable pilgrimages” have been described by both creator and audience as tools of spiritual formation and we have also examined the healing capacity of film and music. If a truly embodied experience is occurring through these objects, like it seemed to in the Middle Ages through illuminated manuscripts and reliquaries (or, as Ignatius of Loyola showed, through imaging and contemplation), faraway travel to pilgrimage sites may not be strictly necessary. This is especially true of the “virtual” pilgrim who is able to sense the presence of others through what we have been calling communitas-through-culture (See Introduction).

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This has become more important than ever as we have faced the Covid-19 pandemic as a global community, and as religious pilgrimages have been canceled or curtailed the world over in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. I interviewed Volker for a brief piece that I wrote for The Conversation on pandemic-inspired, do-it-yourself pilgrimages in August of 2020, and he offered the following advice: “For folks starting their own backyard Camino I think that creating the myth is the most important consideration. Study maps, learn to pronounce the names of the towns, walk in the dust and the mud, be out there in the rain, drink their wine and eat their food, relearn to pretend.”6 In a moment of environmental crisis, and in a world where people have different abilities and means, it is important to be cognizant that roving pilgrimage sites (like Haciendo marcas otra vez) or backyard Caminos that can be negotiated on foot or via riding lawn-mower can still engender an experience of healing and transformation. The idea of transferring the sacredness from one landscape to another has become a way to respond to Covid-19 as well as to what has been called the “twin pandemic” of racial injustice. After studying Volker’s story in the context of a graduate seminar I taught in March of 2020 on art and pilgrimage, Sara Postlethwaite, a sister of the Verbum Dei Missionary Fraternity and student, decided to create her own route as a space for reflection, mourning, and prayer. Postlethwaite mapped St. Kevin’s Way, a nineteen-mile pilgrimage route in County Wicklow, Ireland onto a series of daily 1.5-mile circuits in the urban environs of Daly City, California. The Wicklow Way rambles along roads and countryside from Hollywood to the ruins of the monastery that St. Kevin, a sixth-century abbot, had founded in Glendalough. Postlethwaite had intended to travel back to her native Ireland in the spring of 2020 to walk the route in person, but due to pandemic-related travel restrictions, she brought the pilgrimage to her home in Daly City. Every so often, Postlethwaite would check in on Google Maps to see where she was along the Irish route, pivoting the camera to see surrounding trees or, at one point, finding herself in the center of an old stone circle. After each day’s walk, Postlethwaite paused at the shed at her community house, where she had drawn a to-scale version of the Market Cross at Glendalough. As she traced the intersecting knots, circles and image of the crucified Christ with her chalk, she reflected not just on the suffering caused by the pandemic but also about issues of racism, justice, and privilege. In particular, she remembered Ahmaud Arbery, a Black jogger shot by two white men in a fatal confrontation in February 2020. She inscribed his name on the chalk cross.

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Several joined Postlethwaite’s walk in solidarity, both in the USA and overseas. While projects like this may not solve the many issues of social injustice plaguing our world, the chapters have shown that they can bring people together in solidarity as a step toward healing. While I have tried to include a diversity of case studies within various cultural and global contexts, positions within or outside the artworld, and so on, my primary sources comprised in-depth interviews and site visits, which means that I was often limited by language, access, and funding. I am aware of these gaps, but my hope is that this book offers some interdisciplinary approaches and models that can be applied to future studies. Another positive impact of these “transferred” pilgrimages is that they can engender a sense of community and belonging among immigrants and their descendants. This was explored in Chapter 4 through the work of Gisela Insuaste, which looked specifically at aspects of her own family’s immigration from Ecuador to New York City, and her reimagining of landscapes of trauma and healing. One project that has sought to achieve this kind of communitas for the diaspora community, but well within the realm of institutional Catholicism, is the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. In his book on the National Shrine, Thomas Tweed writes about the commissioned artworks and architectural features of the chapels in the crypt, focusing in part on the marble columns that contain stone quarried from five continents.7 The inclusion of quarried stone, an integral part of the natural landscape, speaks to the importance of material objects as a vessel of memory. The rich material culture of the Basilica becomes a lens through which to discuss the inclusion of Catholic immigrants into an American Church which professes a focus on unity, universality, inclusiveness, diversity, and especially in welcoming immigrant communities. Each chapel contains sacred images and objects associated with specific global pilgrimage sites, and each attracts pilgrims from all over the world. Most also contain replicas of pilgrimage sites or images—for example, an Irish holy well, a copy of Our Lady of Częstochowa, and an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The dedication of the chapels to various national Marian symbols “allow multiple peoples . . . not only to construct collective identity but also to claim their place in the national ecclesiastical community.”8 On a personal note, I have had many meaningful conversations about the chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Le Vang, in particular, with a number of students and colleagues. Fr. Anthony Bui told me that he did his clinical pastoral education in Richmond and often visited the National Shrine, proud to see Vietnamese culture

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represented there.9 He explained that in the chapel was an image of the Virgin Mary wearing a traditional Vietnamese garment called an áo dài, which reminded him of home (where women in his family wear traditional dress at feasts and celebrations). As an immigrant himself, the chapel helped him to feel a closeness to the culture and the people that were far away as well as to the Virgin Mary, hence strengthening his prayer life. This is an example of extratemporal communitas spurred by an object that is in a constant dialogue with an oftendistant sacred site. I considered framing the book with a sustained study of the Basilica chapels dedicated to national symbols of the Virgin Mary, but an early stumbling block was that many of the chapels were created through juried commissions. Archivist Geraldine Rohling pointed out that it is likely only the muralist Mary Reardon, a Carmelite Tertiary, who “engaged in a pilgrimage while doing her preparation and research for the artwork in a chapel.”10 A “pilot” day of pilgrim interviews conducted by a graduate research assistant, Mary Reilly, did begin to reveal that pilgrims found solace in the Marian chapels connected to their familial culture and heritage in particular. The case studies I chose to focus on instead, however, link the artist’s intentions with the experiences of those encountering their work. Narrative and research were allowed to work in tandem to form what Kovach has called a “culturally nuanced way of knowing” through cohesively bringing together the projects of the artists, creators, and collectives with my own and others’ embodied viewership.11 As Frank Burch Brown has postulated in his introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts, “[t]he art that has the greatest significance is not necessarily the art of institutional religion but rather the art which happens to discern what religion in its institutional or personal focus needs most to see” emphasizing an “atmosphere of exchange with the rest of life and culture, including religion.”12 Shifting the lens to a more sustained focus on the intentions and experiences of artists and audiences outside of institutional liturgical commissions has allowed for a more nuanced understanding of pluralistic beliefs. On the Camino de Santiago, the term “trail magic” is often used among pilgrims to describe fortuitous encounters and remarkable coincidences (or fated encounters, depending on one’s stance). One such moment occurred while I was presenting a paper at a gallery in Berkeley in which I brought London-based artist Chiara Ambrosio’s As Far as the Eye Can Travel zines into dialogue with Insuaste’s installations. For me, the connection was instinctive— both women were intentionally engaging the idea of art as communitas by

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incorporating meaningful pilgrimage souvenirs into their work including traditional Catholic objects like icons and ex-votos. Ambrosio engages visual tactility as a conduit toward embodied experience in the zine subscription series. The title of the series invokes the medieval idea of the contemplative pilgrimage of the eye through manuscripts and the ancient theory of vision called “extramission” in which the eyes are believed to emit rays that “apprehend the particularities” of objects, hence linking sight to touch (Plate 14a).13 They can also be held in the palm of the hand (adding an element of manual tactility) and are completely handmade. Each issue is thematic and contains photographs, drawings, and text. The objects are interactive and cinematic—on one page a panoramic landscape, the next an intimate portrait; the aperture of Ambrosio’s lens widens and narrows, carrying the viewer as far as the eye can travel, from Coney Island to Palermo and beyond. They contain ex-votos and religious images, landscapes, shrines, and portraits—all things, people, and places that Ambrosio has personally encountered in her travels and on pilgrimage, and captured through film. Issue 26, “Napoli 18” (Plate 14) begins with an augury into the landscape as we follow a figure’s gaze out the window. Suddenly, we are on the street looking at a pile of debris which juxtaposes plywood cupboards with an empty sculptural niche. On the next page, day turns to night and we gaze up at the rooftops and down again, onto a roadside Marian shrine. An icon of Maria Della Strada—the Lady of the Way, is affixed to the wall and underneath is an altarcito of photographs and flower offerings (red roses for Mary, Plate 14b). Ambrosio told me in a recent interview that the series of “paper Wunderkammer,” as she calls them, are “an act of commitment to the mystery of presence, a search for continuity within the cracks and the margins.”14 Ambrosio emphasizes the collective subconscious at work in what she sees as a universal re-enchantment of artistic production and draws on a diversity of sources and inspirations, including the work of the Czech neo-surrealist filmmaker, Jan Švankmajer. She also acknowledges that her love of “charged architectures and spaces of ritual” recalls a childhood immersed in the deeply Catholic culture of Calabria and Rome. The popular piety of her childhood is one of tactility and expression; living in what Andrew Greeley described as an “enchanted world . . . of statues and holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures” which “hint at a deeper and more religious sensibility” in which the divine can be found “lurking in creation” and the belief that objects can “revelations of Grace.”15 Her feature-length film La Frequenza

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Fantasma explores a village in the mountains in the south of Italy—it is a filmic collage of catacombs, embodied devotional practices, and the presence of the dead; an exploration of communitas through cinematic space. Calabria has a religious culture saturated with devotional paraphernalia. It is not unusual for the faithful to press a prayer card to the relic of a saint to create a third-class relic that is believed to carry a trace of a blessing of the holy body. Like these vernacular relics, Ambrosio underscores the intended apotropaic capacity of the zines, which she sees as a transfer of spirit from interior spaces, landscapes, and objects to film: The zines are handmade talismans, amulets, and portals inside which the captured images are given to the paper, transformed into charged objects.16

Just as a contact relic made by a Calabrian grandmother, there is an aspect of touch at every step of the way in the production of As Far As the Eye Can Travel— the touch of light as the landscape is captured, the touch of silver nitrate as the image is fixed, the touch of ink on paper. Her project is both an archive of landscapes and spaces and an invitation to a voyage; an extratextual way to “to talk about transcendence, to translate the mystifying and often unspeakable revelations that occur in those fleeting moments of deep connection with a place, a person or an object, what holds onto you and hurtles you towards a much wider history than your own singular one.”17 Her words encapsulate what we have explored through this book—the sense of a tangible presence of the past through representations of space and place through extratemporal communitas. While presenting the material, I clicked on a slide of a page from Issue 3 wherein Ambrosio explores a botánica in East Harlem (Plate 15). That particular zine was the result of a chance encounter with the owner, Jorge Vargas, whom she describes as a “spiritual advisor for all in the neighborhood, regardless of faith and race. His Botánica was a refuge and a shelter, an oasis of kindness and hope.” I had invited Insuaste to come along to this particular talk, where I was floating some of the material for Chapter 4 of this book. There was a flash of recognition on her face when I showed Ambrosio’s photograph of Vargas. Justo Botánica was in the same neighborhood as El Museo del Barrio where she worked at the time, and it featured in a walking tour/pilgrimage guide she had co-authored to help facilitate conversations about immigration and cultural objects and expressions in East Harlem. Vargas died before Ambrosio had a chance to share the finished zine with him, but she was able to show it to his wife and daughter. They were very moved and propped the centerfold photo of Vargas on the shop counter by the register (on which he is leaning in the image, Plate

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15). The zine became a portable altarcito, like the dashboard of Insuaste’s bus—a site of communitas-through-culture in and of itself where the memory of Vargas was made present. An object, communitas, the presence of the past, and transfer of spirit from place to place—an imaging of pilgrimage.

Notes 1 See, for example, D. Blitzer, M. B. Harris, and E. M. Jackson, “Affective Response and Pain Measurement Correlations in a 500 Mile Pilgrimage: El Camino De Santiago,” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 43/5 (2011); and an ongoing study at the Kinesiology and Health Sciences department at the College of William and Mary which is looking at cardiovascular disease risk among pilgrims completing the Camino de Santiago. 2 R. Stanley, “Origins and Applications of Music and Chronic Illness: Role of the Voice, Ancient Chant Scales, and Autonomic Nervous System,” in M. J. Stoltzfus, R. Green, and D. Schumm (eds.), Chronic Illness, Spirituality, and Healing: Diverse Disciplinary, Religious, and Cultural Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 3 M. B. Harris, “The Physiological Effects of Walking Pilgrimage,” International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage,7/1 (2019): art. 9. 4 K. Wiech, M. Farias, G. Kahane, N. Shackel, W. Tiede, and I. Tracey, “fMRI Study Measuring Analgesia Enhanced by Religion as a Belief System,” Pain, 139/2 (2009), 467–76. Tracey’s ongoing research in this area was also picked up by the New Yorker’s “Annals of Medicine” column: One of her most striking experiments tested the common observation that religious faith helps people cope with pain. Comparing the neurological responses of devout Catholics with those of atheists, she found that the two groups had similar baseline experiences of pain, but that, if the subjects were shown a picture of the Virgin Mary (by Sassoferrato, an Italian Baroque painter) while the pain was administered, the believers rated their discomfort nearly a point lower than the atheists did. When the volunteers were shown a secular painting (Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine”), the two groups’ responses were the same. The implications are potentially far-reaching, and not only because they suggest that cultural attitudes may have a neurological imprint. If faith engages a neural mechanism with analgesic benefits—the Catholics showed heightened activity in an area usually associated with the ability to override a physical response—it may be possible to find other, secular ways to engage that circuit.

Conclusion: “As Far as the Eye Can Travel”

5

6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13

14 15 16 17

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See N. Twilley, “The Neuroscience of Pain,” New Yorker (July 2, 2018). Available online: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/ the-neuroscience-of-pain. The term comes from psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jasper and is explored in I. Yalom, “Religion and Psychiatry,” American Journal of Psychotherapy, 56/3 (2002), 302–16; I am grateful to Zucker for sending me this article toward my research. K. Barush, “As Coronavirus Curtails Travel, Backyard Pilgrimages Become the Way to a Spiritual Journey,” The Conversation (August 10, 2020). T. Tweed, America’s Church: The National Shrine and Catholic Presence in the Nation’s Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 215–16. Ibid., 222. Fr. Anthony Bui, Berkeley, CA in a correspondence with the author, March 30, 2019. See, for example, Mary Reardon, “Cathedral Art,” Radcliffe Quarterly (June 1984), 30–1. I am grateful to Geraldine Rohling for sharing this and other resources from her own research on Reardon’s pilgrimages and spiritual formation. M. Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 94. F. B. Brown (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Religion and the Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 15. See M. Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 83; and T. Weststeijn, “Seeing and the Transfer of Spirits in Early Modern Art Theory,” in J. S. Hendrix and C. H. Carman (eds.), Renaissance Theories of Vision (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). Chiara Ambrosio, interview with the author, January 6, 2019. A. Greeley, The Catholic Imagination (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), I. Ambrosio, Artist Statement. Chiara Ambrosio, January 6, 2019.

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Index A Cave of Candles (Dorothy V. Corson) 92, 104 n.136, 105 n.146 ability and access 8, 10, 21, 24, 41, 49, 91, 99 n.53, 107, 148 n.8, 231 Agnew, Vanessa 133, 152 n.81 altarcitos pl. 11, 9, 77, 88, 139, 160, 163, 167, 169, 170, 172, 174–5, 179, 189, 234, 236 Ambrosio, Chiara 12 n.6, 233–5 As Far As The Eye Can Travel pl. 14, pl. 15, 233, 235 La Frequenza Fantasma 234 anagogic experience 5, 10, 61, 140, 219, 223 anamnesis 6, 13 n.23 Anandamyi Ma 72 ancestors, presence of 6, 115, 139, 157, 163, 169–70, 179, 185, 230 Angelico, Fra 32–3, 66 Anne, St. 84 Apocalypse Now (film) 38, 39 Apus 4, 183–4, 187 apparitions 58, 60–70, 81, 84, 88, 93, 176, 210 Ārati 8, 89–90 Arbery, Ahmaud 231 art experienced as pilgrimage 1–11, 35–48, 81–2, 87–8, 122, 135, 139, 143–4, 168, 174, 236, 180, 189 see also pilgrimage of the eye Art-making as pilgrimage 81, 91, 122, 143, 128–31, 140, 212 during pilgrimage 135–9, 136, 137, 144 see also embodiment, souvenir Arthurian Legends 126 see also Holy Grail Artress, Lauren 203, 205–6, 210, 223 n.2 see also Veriditas Project Asher, Arash (MD) 40 Augustine, St. (Bishop of Hippo) 31–2, 82, 87, 140

Augustine, St. (of Canterbury) 124 Authenticity 4, 8, 19–21, 133 Belting and 71–2 kitsch and 97 n.39 search for 25, 28, 74, 93, 230 Baker, Nelson 63, 92–3 tomb pl. 2 Balthasar, Hans Urs von 78–9, 86–7, 103 n.125 Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Washington, DC) 91, 232–3 Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, 140, 181 Basílica Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Agua Santa de Baños 170, 176 Basil of Caesarea, St. 71 Battle Abbey 108–11, 118, 132, 134, 144 Bazin, André 36–7, 44 ‘Beatitudes of the Pilgrim’ 34–5, 54 n.67 Becket, Thomas (St.) 68, 113–18, 128, 134 Bede 31, 53 n.56, 197 n.69 Belting, Hans 71–2 Benjamin, Walter 20, 73–4 Bhakti 4, 8, 58, 72, 88–9, 90 Bhakti Siddhanata Saraswati Thakur 90 Bible 4, 17–8, 29, 63, 84–7, 91, 111, 124, 128–9, 172, 177, 181, 212–13, 215, 217, 219 Bilimoria, Purushottama 204 Black Lives Matter (movement) 86 Black Madonna images 77, 85–6, 102–3 n.121, 176–7, 214–15, 232 see also Virgin Mary Blake, Katherine Sophia 144 Blake, William 8–9, 46, 113, 120–55 “Annotations to the Laocoön” 128–9 Blake Society 132 “Blake’s Chaucer” [Prospectus] 128 cottage at Felpham 109, 135, 139

253

254 “Four Zoas” 138 gravestone 132 illustrations to Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress 137–8 illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy 128, 136 Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion pl. 9, 127–8, 136 “Joseph of Arimathea, among the Rocks of Albion” 129–31 Joseph of Arimathea Preaching to the Britons 130 Preface to Milton, A Poem (1804–8): ‘And did those feet. . .’ 120–34, 121, 136 The Vision of the Last Judgment 142–3 Bloy, Léon 70 Bolinas 206 Boyle, Danny 126 Bread and Puppet Theatre 157–9 Breton, André 135 Brierley, John 27 Brigid of Kildare, St. 76 British Pilgrimage Trust (BPT) 5, 8–9, 107–47, 166, 229 Buddhism 24, 31, 114, 172, 179, 204–5 Bunyan, John see Pilgrim’s Progress Burning Man Festival 160, 170 Seneca Spurling and 160 Cage, John 172 Caimi, Bernardino 91 Camino Ignaciano 34, 177 Camino Inglés 114 Camino de Santiago 4, 7–8, 17, 19–22, 26–8, 33–5, 42, 182 Health and 40, 49, 230 pilgrims 20, 48–9 reconstructions of pl. 1, 2, 7–8, 10, 17–56, 18, 30, 36, 49, 219, 229, 231 trail magic along 132, 233 Can Serrat International Residency 177 cancer 7, 17, 24, 40, 44 and “boundary experiences” 25–6, 230 Cutaneous Lymphoma Foundation 40–1

Index healing vs. curing 37–8 rehabilitation 36, 41 Canterbury 68, 108, 113–19, 123–4, 128, 131, 132, 134 Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) 133 see also Becket, Old Way Celtic spirituality 109, 206 Certeau, Michel de 21, 133, 144 Chan, Marinda, 37 Chartres Cathedral (Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres) 146, 205–6 Labyrinth at 28, 86, 206, 207, 218, 225 n.16 Chauvet, Louis-Marie 93–4 “Cheap Art Manifesto” 157–8, 159 Cistercian (religious order) 43, 148 n.18 Coleman, Simon 2, 7, 19 College Art Association (CAA) 190–1, 19 n.93 Collingwood, R.G. 122, 132 Communion of Saints 28 communitas and cinematic space 235 communitas-through-culture 6–7, 9, 20, 58, 60, 69, 93–4, 107–8, 110, 122, 133, 146, 188, 212, 230, 233, 236 and diaspora communities 232 and entrainment 132 and gaze 119 healing and 40, 132 “liminal communitas” 204 music as communitas 8, 26–7, 56 n.101, 108, 117, 122, 132–4, 139, 144, 189–90 Pilgrim staffs and 118 “Quest consciousness” 132 theories of vision and 140 transtemporal or extratemporal communitas 5, 20, 25, 27, 30, 36, 43, 58, 88, 93, 134, 163, 168–77, 179, 189, 206, 229, 233, 235 Turner and Turner’s model of 5–6, 27, 40, 42, 94, 110, 162, 192, 230 and how it functions outside of time 195 n.31 Connolly, D.K. 28, 205, 207, 218

Index Covid-19 pandemic 10, 231 Credential see Pilgrim Passport Danse Macabre 45, 199 n.92 Dante Alighieri 205, 136 Divine Comedy 79, 128, 143, 145 Day of the Dead see Día de los Muertos Desco Vacuum 180 Día de los Muertos 139, 172, 179 Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines 81, 98 n.51 disability see ability and access Divine Feminine 72, 80–2, 85–7, 103 n.125, 140 Dobberstein, Paul 91, 104 n.138, 104 n.142 Dominic, St. 214 Douce, Francis 74, 79 Dunstan, St. 113 Durga Maa 73, 100 n.63 Eade, John x, 2 Easy Lover (band) 190 ecology 8, 137 Ecuador 1, 4, 9, 160, 163, 165–9, 174–5, 177–80, 183–5, 188–9, 232 Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador 198 n.77 Eliot, T.S. 43 Elsner, Jaś 7, 19, 74, 83, 146, 193 embodiment Art and objects as places of embodied encounter 1, 2, 5, 9, 20, 60, 71, 73, 83, 118, 122, 158, 163, 165–8, 171–4, 178, 180, 187, 192, 203–4, 229–30, 233–4 Art-making as embodied experience 5, 166, 174, 178, 180–1, 183, 189 built environment and pilgrimage sites as 8, 10, 21, 23–4, 48, 58, 89, 91, 205, 209, 213, 218 film 36, 38, 40, 47–9, 235 see also Sobchack health and wellbeing 230 imagination (Blake) 128 music as 120–2, 146 praying and 46–7, 145, 170, 203

255

sacred text as 89 see also pilgrimage and senses/sensory experience environmental crisis and stewardship 8, 10, 122–3, 169, 231, 185 see also rewilding Eratosthenes of Cyrene 22 Estévez Raful Espejo, Nicolás Dumit 189 Eucharist 6, 23–4, 27, 30, 56 n.101, 71, 84, 174 see also Mass ex-votos see offerings Fabisch, Joseph-Hugues 61, 62, 65–9, 77, 80, 81, 83–7, 91–2, 94 Fabri, Felix (OP) 1, 46 film as embodied experience see Embodiment phenomenology of 35–6, 44, 49, 73 pilgrimage 35–48, 234–5 see also titles of specific films Flaxman, John 143 Foster-Campbell, M. 2, 60, 171 Francis, Pope 33, 170 Francis of Assisi, St. 18, 158, 214 Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land of America 91 Franks, Alan 122, 132 Ganesh 89 Garcia, Jerry 107 Gardens of Revelation (Beardsley) 91 Garnett, Jane Spectacular Miracles book (with Gervase Rosser) 74 “Spectacular Miracles” exhibition 192 Gaudí, Antoni 177 Gébelin, Antoine Court de 79 Gell, Alfred 4 Gherarducci, Don Silvestro dei 33 Giffords Circus 122 Glastonbury 76, 85, 124, 129, 131 Abbey 126 thorn tree 125–7, 133 Tor 126–7, 130 Tower of St. Michael pl. 9, 126 Wearyall Hill, 125–6

256

Index

Godric, ‘Hermit St. of Finchale’ 112–20, 123, 134 Gómez-Barris, Macarena 184 Goswami, Srila Rupa 90 Govardhan Eco Village (GEV) 8, 89, 90 graffiti 129, 158, 160–1 Grateful Dead, The 107, 199 n.92 Graves, Rebecca 26, 31, 44 Greeley, Andrew 210, 234 Greenhood, David 22–3 Gregory of Nyssa, St. 23–4, 31 Grobler, Hettienne (Sri BhaktimayiMa) 57–105 “Art Novena for Our Lady of Lourdes” 77 Mysteries of Mary tarot pl. 5, pl. 6, pl. 7, 77–88, 78 Nine Days for the Lady of Lourdes: A Novena 74, 76–7, 84, 87 Pilgrimages 71, 74, 76, 85 Queen of the Heart and Rose 76 grottos 23, 60, 68, 91, 214 at Lourdes (Massabielle) 8, 57–8, 59, 61, 62-3, 65–9, 74, 76, 77, 83–4, 86, 90, 94 reconstructions Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land of America 91; Our Lady of Victory Basilica pl. 2, 92–3 University of Notre Dame 91–2 West Bend Iowa 91 Guillaume de Deguileville 79 Gyutö Monastery 115 Harris, M. Brennan 230, 236 Hayward, Guy pl. 8, 108–9, 109, 110, 114–16, 119, 120, 122, 132, 134–5, 137 health and wellbeing see pilgrimage Heaney, Seamus 107 Hildegard of Bingen 82, 85 Holy Grail 124, 126 holy water 1, 5, 8, 57–8, 63, 64, 67–8, 76, 80–1, 83, 88, 104 n.136, 115–16, 119–20, 126, 133, 160, 166, 167–71, 176, 177–8, 182–3, 185, 193, 234 buying and selling 97 n.38 Yamuna River 89, 90

holy wells 5, 68, 111, 112, 177, 232 Hugh of St. Victor 5, 63–4, 140 Huysmans, J. K. 70 iconography 4, 36, 45, 68, 77, 78–9, 82, 84–5, 140, 143, 176, 183 and ontology 122 icons 4, 35, 38, 65, 76, 77, 80, 86, 88, 234, 140, 189 in Hinduism 99 n.4 as pilgrimage 224 n.4 theology of 71–2 see also Virgin Mary idolatry 111 Ignatian spirituality 10, 46, 201–28 Ignatius of Loyola (St.) 209, 212–16, 220, 222–3, 230 Spiritual Exercises 201, 209–10, 213, 216, 219, 222–3 illuminated manuscripts (medieval) 113, 125, 171, 173, 174 as pilgrimage 1, 46, 135, 219, 230, 234 pilgrimage badges in 2, 3, 60, 68, 76, 87, 117, 174 Immaculate Conception (Dogma of the Catholic Church) 63 immigration community and belonging among immigrants 232–3 experiences of 9, 162–3, 189, 232, 235 New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program 165 Inca Trail (Qhapaq Ñan) 163, 169 Indigenous peoples of the Americas 49 n.3, 51 n.26, 139, 145, 165, 166, 176, 177–8, 184 decolonization of Indigenous art 169 Indigenous-led ecotourism 184 Indigenous methodologies (Kovach) 9, 163 see also Quechua culture indwelling 71 Insuaste, Gisela 157–99 Arroyo boots 164 Bukansan in the distance (stepping out/in) 171

Index Haciendo marcas otra vez 9, 158, 161, 162, 165, 166–9, 171–2, 180, 183, 191, 231 Mapeando pl. 12, 166 Offerings to la Pachamama 185, 186 portal de lana y madera 187, 188, 190 public art commission (PS 254), 165 Travels with Jack 164 walking talking seeing being: love, labor and faith on 14th St. (Vacuum Story Pt 1) pl. 13, 180, 181, 189, 190 International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) 89, 90 James, St. 17, 21, 27–8, 32, 43, 45, 182, 230 Jameson, Anna 69–70, 98 n.42 Jasna Góra Monastery 77 see also Virgin Mary – Our Lady of Częstochowa Jerusalem, city 2, 4, 9, 18, 28–9, 44, 113, 147, 174, 201, 209–10, 214–15, 223 Maps (Situs Hierusalem) 205, 209 see also New Jerusalem “Jerusalem” song pilgrimage pl. 8, 113, 120–3, 128, 131–6, 136, 137, 139, 141, 142, 144, 147 Jesus Christ 17, 29, 32, 38, 47, 53 n.55, 64, 113, 124, 128, 134, 152 n.68, 188, 189, 210–11, 213–18, 223 Devotion to el Niñito 189 Jesus Christ Superstar (film) 174 John of Damascus, St. 71 Joseph, St. (husband of Mary) 22, 29, 44 Joseph of Arimathea, St. 124, 125, 126, 129, 130, 133 Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (St.) 140, 146, 181 Tilma of 140, 146, 181 Junker, Yohana 51 n.26, 193 n.7 Justo Botánica pl. 15, 235 Kali Ma 73 Kaprow, Allan 9, 162, 171–2, 174, 193 Apple Shrine 172, 173 Reinventions (theory of) 9, 172, 173 Stockroom 172

257

Karst, Layla 21, 71, 98 n.52, 99 n.53, 144, 193 Keay, James pl. 8, 122, 133 Kovach, Margaret 9, 163, 167, 233 Krishna, Lord 89, 205 see also Vrindaban Bihari Labouré, Catherine (St.) 81 labyrinths 1, 2, 9–10, 26–8, 46, 76, 80, 86, 88, 146, 147, 201, 202, 203–4, 205–7, 209–20, 220, 221, 222–3, 223 n.3, 230 as “thin places” 206 see also Veriditas Project Lackawanna, NY 57–8, 63, 92–3 Land Art (movement) 23, 51 n.26 landscape 4, 23, 47, 61, 90, 93, 107, 120, 122–4, 126–8, 145, 147, 165, 169, 174, 184, 189 communitas 6, 108, 115, 132 moving through 190, 222 and representations in music and art 4, 7–8, 19, 21–2, 60, 107, 112–13, 120–2, 129, 133, 135, 143–6, 163, 166, 177, 178, 183, 185, 234–5 traces of in art 31, 32, 171, 177, 179, 183, 188–9, 195 n.34, 232, 235 transferable holiness 18, 74, 134–5, 143, 165–6, 184, 187, 223, 231, 235 virtual 2, 10, 34 Latour, Bruno 4, 23–4, 51 n, 30, 168 Lee, Sam 123–4 liminality 25, 32, 35, 82, 109, 111, 127, 133, 139, 163, 169, 204, 206, 214 liminoid 47, 109, 119, 214, 226 n.40 London Olympics 123, 126 Lourdes, France 8, 57–105, 59, 181 see also grotto Luke, St. 53 n.51, 65, 77, 177 McCoy, Marina 219–21 McDannell, Colleen 8, 60, 76 Mahaprabhu, Caitanya 90 mānasa pūjā 89 maps and mapping 1–2, 7–8, 10, 17, 18-24, 27, 35, 45, 46, 49, 93–4, 127,

258

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135–6, 143–4, 151 n.56, 161, 163, 166, 177–193, 194 n.14, 201, 205, 208, 209–11, 219, 223, 224 n.3, 231 Gough Map 108 see also Situs Hiersalem; David Greenhood Maria Durch Ein Dornwald Ging 133–4 Martin of Tours (St.) 110–11 Mary, Mother of God see Virgin Mary Mary Magdalene, St. 86–7, 103 n.125, 113 Mass, Catholic 48, 69, 84, 88, 91, 111, 120, 176, 179–81 medial shift, theory of 8, 29, 36, 49, 58, 83, 93–4, 179, 201, 211, 222–3 see also Wood, Christopher medieval manuscripts see illuminated manuscripts Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism 78–9 memory 2, 5, 60, 77, 115–18, 146, 161, 163, 192, 206–7, 215 as artistic impulse 8, 58 collective/cultural 94, 107, 125, 127, 167, 179, 190, 193 and landscape 132, 171, 185, 232 “Muscle memory” of pilgrimage 163 “Paradigmatic memory” 20, 49 pilgrimages in memory of deceased 38, 157, 236 see also souvenirs Meru, Mt. 204 205 Messiaen, Olivier 145–7 Minotaur 205 Miracles of the Virgin 114 Miraculous Medal 81, 84 Mitchell, W.J.T. 4, 167 Montserrat, Spain 160, 169, 176, 177–8, 182, 193, 209, 214, 215, 220 more-than-human 184, 198 n.73 Morgan, David 12 n.8, 168, 194 n.24 Muilenberg-Koenig Seminar 204 Munger, Kate see Threshold Choir Museo del Barrio, El 165, 179, 235 music 8, 84, 87, 98 n.51, 107–55, 172, 190, 210, 230 activation of sacred space 118 in art 1, 77, 190

chant 26, 87, 89, 110, 115, 132, 189, 219, 229 in film 47 “healing voice” 114, 229 and memory 9, 57, 114–15, 131, 133, 134, 171, 189–90 as offering 122–3 and processions 60, 157 as a protective prayer 113, 116, 117 as relic 112–20, 146 in Roman Rite 56 n.101 and transcendence 9, 108 see also communitas/music as communitas Muxía 43 Mystic Spiral 137–8 see also Purce, Jill Nadalo, Stephanie 190 Nann, Tom 9–10, 211, 212–13, 216–17, 221 neoplatonism 32, 82, 87 “New Jerusalem” and the British imagination 122, 124, 126–7, 129 Heavenly Jerusalem 38 Mormons 145 Swedenborg and 127 New York City 94, 160, 165, 180–1, 188–9, 191, 232, 235, 161, 165 Notre Dame, University of 91–2, 104 n.136 offerings pl. 13, 69–70, 89, 90, 120–3, 147, 158, 168, 176, 179, 183–5, 184, 186, 187–9, 192, 220, 234 Old Way, 108, 113–14, 119, 134 O’Neil, Annie 14 n.34, 35, 37, 40–1, 42–3 as pilgrim 42, 48 see also Phil’s Camino film Our Lady of Victory National Shrine and Basilica 57–8, 63, 92–3 Oxford Movement 111 Pachamama 184–7 Parry, Sir Hubert 9, 121, 126, 131, 133, 146 Parsons, William pl. 8, 107–8, 109, 116, 118–20, 122, 132, 134–5, 137, 147 Patrick, St. 126

Index pelican, symbolism of 139–40, 141, 144 Petronius, St. 28 Phil’s Camino (film) pl. 3, 10, 25, 31, 33, 35–48, 37, 46, 55 n.76, 230 see also Annie O’Neil pilgrim passports 34, 35, 137 pilgrimage 8, 18, 33, 38, 42, 44, 57, 71, 74, 80, 85, 89, 92, 107–47, 157, 160, 163, 169, 176–7, 189–92, 204, 210, 213–23, 232–6; and allegory 79 of the eye 2–5, 63, 127, 139–40, 213, 217, 229, 233–5 film as 35–48, 234–5 health and healing along 1, 10, 35, 38, 40–1, 49, 61, 63, 67–70, 76, 83–4, 111, 114–17, 132, 162–3, 176–7, 181–3, 205, 210, 214, 229–30 “in place” 42–3, 214, 215 and Irish Traveler community 111 as liminoid phenomenon 47, 109, 214 medieval 1, 2, 19, 28, 43, 46, 60, 63, 87, 147, 214, 219 mental 2, 19, 43, 60, 68, 87, 89, 115, 117, 122, 130, 207, 209, 234 metaphor of 29, 43, 48, 131, 145, 182, 201, 204 and mortality 45 reconstructions of 2, 7, 9, 11, 18–19, 22, 24, 28–9, 33, 58, 63, 69, 71, 74, 77, 88, 91, 172, 181, 201, 210, 232 reentry and return (from pilgrimage) 41, 43–4, 206 renewal and rebirth during 6, 23–4, 27, 42, 66, 181–2, 201, 205 senses and sensory experience (1–6, 10, 22, 38, 41, 57–8, 73, 76, 80, 88–9, 111, 118, 120, 127, 132, 134, 147, 166–8, 188, 192, 213, 234 see also embodiment; music “Surrogate pilgrimage” 20–1, 71, 99 n.53 Virtual 10, 14 n.34, 35–6, 60, 68, 209, 230 see also art-making; Camino de Santiago; communitas; embodiment; ex. Lourdes; maps and mapping; memory; music;

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souvenirs; specific sites and routes pilgrimage-by-proxy (Medieval) 2 Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan) 137–8, 146, 182, 205 Postlethwaite, Sara (VDMF) 231–2 Potala Palace 204 prāna· pratist· hā 88 prayer cards 1, 12 n.10, 31, 74, 77, 79, 82, 112, 235, 75 see also relics; souvenirs Purce, Jill 114, 135–8, 205, 229 Qhapaq Ñan see Inca Trail Quechua culture 169, 177–92 Ram Dass 26 reenchantment 9, 109, 168–9, 234 reenactment 6–7, 11, 35–6, 44, 94, 94  n.1, 132–3, 202–3 Steven Payne 132–3 Reilly, Mary 233 relics 2, 110–11, 130–1, 210 in Bede 53 n.56, 197 n.69 canon law and 12 n.10, 74–6 Canterbury water 68, 97 n.36, 115, 183 Contact relics (or ‘third-class relics’) 4, 31–2, 38, 75, 4, 12 n.10, 65, 74–6, 88, 112, 210, 229, 235 Council of Trent 73, 100 n.68 and photography 73–4, 87–8, 167, 234–5 tertiary relics 32 Medieval attitudes towards 100 n.75, 116, 150 n.39 in Patristic writing 31 of St. James 36 music as a relic see music reliquaries 31–2, 146, 190–2, 230 Reliquary Effect, 11 n.6 Renye, Denise 80 Retiro San Iñigo, El 9, 203 see also labyrinths rewilding 1, 8, 123–4, 132 Rice, Kitty pl. 8, 8–9, 122, 135, 139–44 Untitled, 141 Rosary pl. 1, 29, 33, 42, 46–8, 65–6, 73, 76, 77–9, 78, 81–4, 111, 219, 234

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Ross, Deborah 109, 226 n.40 Rudy, Kathryn 174 Sacro Monte di Varallo 91 Sahyadri mountains 8 Saint-Gildard (convent) 67, 84 Saint James Cathedral (Seattle) 45 Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome 69 Saint Winefride’s Well, Wales 111, 112 Salomon, Jenny 161, 167 Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute (Cedars-Sinai) 40 San Juán (City) 189 Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe 180–1 Schumann, Peter 157–8 “the WHY CHEAP ART? Manifesto” 159 senses and sensory experience see pilgrimage; embodiment Shakespeare, William 44 Sheldrake, Rupert 115 Sherma, Rita 90, 99 n.54, 104 n.134 Shulbrede Priory 133 Shyama-kunda 90 Siddhalokas 204 Silf, Margaret (Inner Compass) 211 Simmel, Georg 165 Situs Hierusalem see maps and mapping Sobchack, Vivian 8, 36, 41, 48 Soubirous, Bernadette (St.) 58, 61–8, 74, 77, 81, 83–5, 91, 93–4 souvenirs apotropaic capacities of 60, 117, 168–71, 174, 183–4, 188, 235 “Camino dust” 31–2, 53 n.55 as incorporated into artworks 1, 5, 8–9, 58, 70–4, 82–3, 87, 161, 165–74, 183, 233–4 as kitsch 69–70 pilgrim badges (medieval) 2, 34, 60, 68, 115, 137 see also illuminated manuscripts, relics – ampullae as pilgrimage sites 8, 57–94 scallop shells as 182, 14 n.34, 27–8, 35, 41, 68, 118 songs as 115–17, 146–7

statues 1, 77, 82 as tokens of remembrance 7, 18, 57, 60–4, 64, 68, 193, 26–7, 87, 94, 146, 157 see also relics; pilgrim passports; “symbol vehicles” Spirit, transfer of 4, 7, 9, 20, 30, 60, 69, 74, 165–7, 172, 188, 216, 229, 235–6, Srila Rupa Goswami 90 Sri Radha 89 Stager, Jennifer 161, 167, 171, 174, 191 Stanley, Ruth 117, 229 Stations of the Cross 28, 47, 91, 211 storytelling 167, 183 Surrealism (movement) 135 “symbol vehicles” 6, 60–1, 94, 95 n.6, 135 Švankmajer, Jan 234 Swedenborg, Emanuel 127 Swedish Cancer Institute, Seattle 25, 230 tabula rasa 65 tapas 25, 30, 31, 33–4 tarot allegorical interpretation of 79–80 mindfulness practices and 80 Teresa of Ávila, St. 64, 66 Teruya, Weston 168, 183 see also (Un)making Thakur, Bhakti Siddhanata Saraswati 90 Thangka 205 The Way (film) 38–42 thin places 109, 206 Thomas, Dylan 45 Threshold Choir 26, 52 n.36 Tungurahua (volcano) 176 Turner, Edith and Victor 5–6, 9, 11, 25, 27, 47, 60, 81, 94, 109–10, 133, 162, 170–1, 192, 214, 230 and “tactile transmission of grace” 95 n.4. see also communitas and ‘symbol vehicle’ Turpo, Rufino 187 unexpected projects 161 see also Xbus (Un)making 168, 183, 188

Index Vashon Island 7, 17–56, 31, 39, 46 Veriditas Project 80, 224 n.5 Villalba, Monseñor Leonidas Eduardo Proaño 169 Virgin Mary pl. 3, 3, 4, 43, 58, 79–83, 86–7, 91–2, 103 n.125, 108, 113–18, 124, 140, 170, 177, 213, 215, 233 miracles and 67–70, 83–5, 96 n.11, 113–14, 149 n.24, 176–7, 196 n.50 Miraculous Medal 81, 84 Madonna of Montserrat 101 n.82, 160, 169, 176–8, 182, 193, 209, 214, 215, 220 Maria della Strada 234 Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Agua Santa de Baños 175, 176 Our Lady of Chartres, 79 Our Lady of Canterbury 113–14, 118 Our Lady of Częstochowa pl. 4, 77, 86, 232 Our Lady of Fátima 176 Our Lady of Ferguson and All Those Who Have Died of Gun Violence 86, 103 n.123 Our Lady of Guadalupe (Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe) 86, 140, 146, 232 Our Lady of Le Vang 232–3 Our Lady of Lourdes pl. 2, pl. 4, 58–95, 59, 68, 91–3 Our Lady of Walsingham 68, 137, 157 Our Lady of the Waters 67, 84 “Sainte Marie Virgine” 113–16, 134 Renaissance imagery 67, 236 n.4 titles of (and associated imagery): Immaculate Conception pl. 4, 61–3, 66, 82, 85, 95 n.9 Theotokos 85 Virgin and Child (William Blake) 140, 142 Virgin of Rocamadour 67, 103 n.121 see also apparitions; Black Madonna

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Vishnu, Lord 89 Volker, Phil pl. 3, 7, 17–56, 19 as artist 17–24, 30, 35 Caminoheads (blog) 51 n.22, see notes, ch. 1 for specific entries Catholicism 7, 22, 29, 31, 33, 44, 46–8 experience with cancer 7, 17, 24–5, 36, 40, 44–5, 230 kinesthetic learning 24 see also Phil’s Camino and Camino de Santiago Vrindaban Behari 89 Vrindavan 8, 89, 109 n.134, 109 n.135 Wagner, Philip J. 91 Walking pl. 3, 2, 5, 7, 10, 17, 20–49, 53 n.55, 65, 83, 107–8, 111, 121–4, 127, 132–4, 144–6, 147 n.2, 163, 165–6, 174, 180–1, 187–93, 201–24, 205, 229–32, 235 Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago (film) 42 Warner, Marina 69, 85, 97 n.39 Wicklow Way 231 Wiech, Katja 230 Williams, Ralph Vaughan 123–4, 131 Windsor-Clive, India 8–9, 122, 127, 131, 134–9 Drawings 136, 137 Wizard of Oz (film) 47 Wood, Christopher 8, 20, 35–6, 179, 211 see also medial shift, theory of Xbus pl. 10, 157, 160, 161–3, 168–77, 183, 187, 189 Yalom, Irvin 25 Yamuna River 89, 90 YASunidos 184 yātrā 89 Youngbloods, The 212 Zucker, David MD, PhD 25, 40–1, 230

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Plate 1 Volker’s backyard Camino circuit start and endpoint. Photo: Author.

Plate 2 Tomb of Fr. Nelson H. Baker, VG in the Lourdes grotto reconstruction, Our Lady of Victory National Shrine and Basilica, Lackawanna, NY. Photo c/o Our Lady of Victory National Shrine and Basilica.

Plate 3 Film still: Sequence of Volker walking through backyard into Spain. Phil’s Camino (2016) archive.

Plate 4 Hettienne Grobler, Art Novena for Our Lady of Lourdes, 2013 (typewriter key, religious medals, sheet music, rosary, souvenir statue), left, and reproduction of Our Lady of Częstochowa (as of the type attached to the back wall of the Novena box, upper left), icon, date unknown.

Plate 5 Hettienne Grobler (a) IV Roses, souvenir statue of the Virgin Mary with roses, textiles, and religious medals affixed to the background and borders; (b) XXI Heaven on Earth, souvenir statue of the Virgin Mary with “Immaculate Conception” halo, prayer card, and other objects. Mysteries of Mary series, 2016.

Plate 6 Hettienne Grobler (a) III Vessels, souvenir reproductions of Fabisch’s grotto sculpture at Lourdes, textiles, lace, decorative fruit on borders; (b) VII Vessels, lacework, seashells, souvenir version of Fabisch’s grotto sculpture at Lourdes, rosary, jewelry, birthday candles, other objects. Mysteries of Mary series, 2016.

Plate 7 Hettienne Grobler Handmaiden of Roses (left), paint, textiles, decorative fruit and flowers, part of a rosary with a rose charm, souvenir statue from Lourdes and III Holy Rood (right), turquoise skull, decorative roses, gilded roses, small devotional image of the crucified Christ, souvenir statues of Mary as Immaculate Conception (Fabisch’s grotto sculpture at Lourdes) and as she appears on the Miraculous Medal, image in background of the pavement labyrinth at Our Lady of Chartres Cathedral, France. Mysteries of Mary series, 2016.

Plate 8 William Parsons, Kitty Rice, James Keay, and Guy Hayward while on the “Jerusalem” pilgrimage (October 2016) Photo: William Parsons, used with permission.

Plate 9 William Blake, Frontispiece, Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion (c. 1821, Copy E) Illuminated printing, Yale Center for British Art (left); Pilgrim inside the Tower of St. Michael, Glastonbury (2012). Photo: Chiara Ambrosio (used with permission).

Plate 10 Gisela Insuaste Haciendo marcas otra vez—Making Marks, Again (2014) (view from front of bus), installation of tape, wood, moss, wool, succulent plants, Andean textiles, and other objects on a decommissioned prisoner-transport vehicle. Image used with permission.

Plate 11 Gisela Insuaste, Haciendo marcas otra vez—Making Marks, Again (2014) (altarcito on dash), installation of tape, wood, moss, wool, succulent plants, Andean textiles, and other objects on a decommissioned prisoner-transport vehicle. Image used with permission.

Plate 12 Gisela Insuaste, Mapeando (2015), mixed media, dimensions variable. Used with permission.

Plate 13 Gisela Insuaste, offerings left on 14th St. pilgrimage walking talking seeing being: love, labor and faith on 14th St (Vacuum Story Pt 1) (2012), copper wire, Ecuadorian wool from 2004, cotton, twine, thread (colors of Gran Colombia, Ecuadorian flag).

Plate 14 (a) Chiara Ambrosio, “Napoli 18,” As Far As the Eye Can Travel, Issue No. 26, February 2018, (b) Chiara Ambrosio, “Palermo Dialogues,” As Far As the Eye Can Travel, Cover, Issue No. 20, August 2017.

Plate 15 Chiara Ambrosio, “Justo Botanica,” As Far As The Eye Can Travel, Issue No. 3, March 2016.